diff --git a/src/search.rs b/src/search.rs
index 113259e..71329f0 100644
--- a/src/search.rs
+++ b/src/search.rs
@@ -173,11 +173,26 @@ impl Rustysearch {
     ///
     pub fn make_segment_name(&self, term: &str) -> String {
         let term = &self.hash_name(term, 6);
-        
+
         let index_file_name = format!("{}.index", term);
         let segment_path = Path::new(&self.index_path).join(index_file_name);
         let segment_path = segment_path.to_str().unwrap().to_string();
 
+        fs::write(&segment_path, "").expect("Unable to create segment file");
+
         return segment_path;
     }
+
+    /// Given a ``line`` from the segment file, this returns the term & its info.
+    ///
+    /// The term info is stored as serialized JSON. The default separator
+    /// between the term & info is the ``\t`` character, which would never
+    /// appear in a term due to the way tokenization is done.
+    ///
+    pub fn parse_record(&self, line: &str) -> (String, String) {
+        let mut parts = line.trim().split("\t");
+        let term = parts.next().unwrap().to_string();
+        let info = parts.next().unwrap().to_string();
+        (term, info)
+    }
 }
diff --git a/tests/rustysearch.rs b/tests/rustysearch.rs
index f323503..a3676c0 100644
--- a/tests/rustysearch.rs
+++ b/tests/rustysearch.rs
@@ -96,6 +96,18 @@ mod tests {
         assert_eq!(segment_name, "/tmp/rustysearch_makesegmentname/index/5d4140.index");
     }
 
+    #[test]
+    fn test_parse_record(){
+        let search = Rustysearch::new("/tmp/rustysearch_parserecord");
+        search.setup();
+
+        let line = "my_term\t{\"frequency\": 100}";
+        let (term, info) = search.parse_record(line);
+
+        assert_eq!(term, "my_term");
+        assert_eq!(info, "{\"frequency\": 100}");
+    }
+
     // Helper function to clean up the stats file
     fn clean_stats(tmp_path: &str){
         let search = Rustysearch::new(tmp_path);