| split | |
| Author: | AT&T Bell Laboratories |
| Developer: | Various open-source and commercial developers |
| Programming Language: | C |
| Operating System: | Unix, Unix-like, Plan 9, IBM i |
| Platform: | Cross-platform |
| Genre: | Command |
| License: | coreutils GPLv3+ |
split is a utility on Unix, Plan 9, and Unix-like operating systems most commonly used to split a computer file into two or more smaller files.
The command first appeared in Version 3 Unix and is part of the X/Open Portability Guide since issue 2 of 1987. It was inherited into the first version of POSIX.1 and the Single Unix Specification. The version of split bundled in GNU coreutils was written by Torbjorn Granlund and Richard Stallman.[1] The command has also been ported to the IBM i operating system.[2]
The command-syntax is:
The default behavior of split is to generate output files of a fixed size, default 1000 lines. The files are named by appending aa, ab, ac, etc. to output filename. If output filename is not given, the default filename of x is used, for example, xaa, xab, etc. When a hyphen (-) is used instead of input filename, data is derived from standard input. The files are typically rejoined using a utility such as cat.
Additional program options permit a maximum character count (instead of a line count), a maximum line length, how many incrementing characters in generated filenames, and whether to use letters or digits.
Create a file named "myfile.txt" with exactly 3,000 lines of data:
Now, use the split command to break this file into pieces (note: unless otherwise specified, split will break the file into 1,000-line files):split command has broken the original file (keeping the original intact) into three, equal in number of lines (i.e., 1,000), files: xaa, xab, and xac.