SPLIT(1) | General Commands Manual | SPLIT(1) |
split
— split a
file into pieces
split |
-d [-l
line_count] [-a
suffix_length] [file
[prefix]] |
split |
-d -b
byte_count[K |k |M |m |G |g ]
[-a suffix_length]
[file [prefix]] |
split |
-d -n
chunk_count [-a
suffix_length] [file
[prefix]] |
split |
-d -p
pattern [-a
suffix_length] [file
[prefix]] |
The split
utility reads the given
file and breaks it up into files of 1000 lines each
(if no options are specified), leaving the file
unchanged. If file is a single dash
(‘-
’) or absent,
split
reads from the standard input.
The options are as follows:
-a
suffix_length-b
byte_count[K
|k
|M
|m
|G
|g
]k
or K
is appended to the
number, the file is split into byte_count kilobyte
pieces. If m
or M
is
appended to the number, the file is split into
byte_count megabyte pieces. If
g
or G
is appended to the
number, the file is split into byte_count gigabyte
pieces.-d
-l
line_count-n
chunk_count-p
pattern-b
and
-l
options.If additional arguments are specified, the first is used as the
name of the input file which is to be split. If a second additional argument
is specified, it is used as a prefix for the names of the files into which
the file is split. In this case, each file into which the file is split is
named by the prefix followed by a lexically ordered suffix using
suffix_length characters in the range
“a
-z
”. If
-a
is not specified, two letters are used as the
suffix.
If the prefix argument is not specified, the
file is split into lexically ordered files named with the prefix
“x
” and with suffixes as above.
The LANG
, LC_ALL
,
LC_CTYPE
and LC_COLLATE
environment variables affect the execution of split
as described in environ(7).
The split
utility exits 0 on
success, and >0 if an error occurs.
Split input into as many files as needed, so that each file contains at most 2 lines:
$ echo -e "first line\nsecond line\nthird line\nforth line" | split -l2
Split input in chunks of 10 bytes using numeric prefixes for file names. This generates two files of 10 bytes (x00 and x01) and a third file (x02) with the remaining 2 bytes:
$ echo -e "This is 22 bytes long" | split -d -b10
Split input generating 6 files:
echo -e "This is 22 bytes long" | split -n 6
Split input creating a new file every time a line matches the regular expression for a “t” followed by either “a” or “u” thus creating two files:
$ echo -e "stack\nstock\nstuck\nanother line" | split -p 't[au]'
The split
utility conforms to
IEEE Std 1003.1-2001 (“POSIX.1”).
A split
command appeared in
Version 3 AT&T UNIX.
Before FreeBSD 14, pattern and line matching only operated on lines shorter than 65,536 bytes.
October 25, 2022 | macOS 14.6 |