(coreutils.info.gz) split invocation
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5.3 'split': Split a file into pieces.
======================================
'split' creates output files containing consecutive or interleaved
sections of INPUT (standard input if none is given or INPUT is '-').
Synopsis:
split [OPTION] [INPUT [PREFIX]]
By default, 'split' puts 1000 lines of INPUT (or whatever is left
over for the last section), into each output file.
The output files' names consist of PREFIX ('x' by default) followed
by a group of characters ('aa', 'ab', ... by default), such that
concatenating the output files in traditional sorted order by file name
produces the original input file (except '-nr/N'). By default split
will initially create files with two generated suffix characters, and
will increase this width by two when the next most significant position
reaches the last character. ('yz', 'zaaa', 'zaab', ...). In this way
an arbitrary number of output files are supported, which sort as
described above, even in the presence of an '--additional-suffix'
option. If the '-a' option is specified and the output file names are
exhausted, 'split' reports an error without deleting the output files
that it did create.
The program accepts the following options. Also see Common
options.
'-l LINES'
'--lines=LINES'
Put LINES lines of INPUT into each output file.
For compatibility 'split' also supports an obsolete option syntax
'-LINES'. New scripts should use '-l LINES' instead.
'-b SIZE'
'--bytes=SIZE'
Put SIZE bytes of INPUT into each output file. SIZE may be, or may
be an integer optionally followed by, one of the following
multiplicative suffixes:
'b' => 512 ("blocks")
'KB' => 1000 (KiloBytes)
'K' => 1024 (KibiBytes)
'MB' => 1000*1000 (MegaBytes)
'M' => 1024*1024 (MebiBytes)
'GB' => 1000*1000*1000 (GigaBytes)
'G' => 1024*1024*1024 (GibiBytes)
and so on for 'T', 'P', 'E', 'Z', and 'Y'.
'-C SIZE'
'--line-bytes=SIZE'
Put into each output file as many complete lines of INPUT as
possible without exceeding SIZE bytes. Individual lines longer
than SIZE bytes are broken into multiple files. SIZE has the same
format as for the '--bytes' option.
'--filter=COMMAND'
With this option, rather than simply writing to each output file,
write through a pipe to the specified shell COMMAND for each output
file. COMMAND should use the $FILE environment variable, which is
set to a different output file name for each invocation of the
command. For example, imagine that you have a 1TiB compressed file
that, if uncompressed, would be too large to reside on disk, yet
you must split it into individually-compressed pieces of a more
manageable size. To do that, you might run this command:
xz -dc BIG.xz | split -b200G --filter='xz > $FILE.xz' - big-
Assuming a 10:1 compression ratio, that would create about fifty
20GiB files with names 'big-aa.xz', 'big-ab.xz', 'big-ac.xz', etc.
'-n CHUNKS'
'--number=CHUNKS'
Split INPUT to CHUNKS output files where CHUNKS may be:
N generate N files based on current size of INPUT
K/N only output Kth of N to stdout
l/N generate N files without splitting lines
l/K/N likewise but only output Kth of N to stdout
r/N like 'l' but use round robin distribution
r/K/N likewise but only output Kth of N to stdout
Any excess bytes remaining after dividing the INPUT into N chunks,
are assigned to the last chunk. Any excess bytes appearing after
the initial calculation are discarded (except when using 'r' mode).
All N files are created even if there are fewer than N lines, or
the INPUT is truncated.
For 'l' mode, chunks are approximately INPUT size / N. The INPUT
is partitioned into N equal sized portions, with the last assigned
any excess. If a line _starts_ within a partition it is written
completely to the corresponding file. Since lines are not split
even if they overlap a partition, the files written can be larger
or smaller than the partition size, and even empty if a line is so
long as to completely overlap the partition.
For 'r' mode, the size of INPUT is irrelevant, and so can be a pipe
for example.
'-a LENGTH'
'--suffix-length=LENGTH'
Use suffixes of length LENGTH. If a LENGTH of 0 is specified, this
is the same as if (any previous) '-a' was not specified, and thus
enables the default behavior, which starts the suffix length at 2,
and unless '-n' or '--numeric-suffixes=FROM' is specified, will
auto increase the length by 2 as required.
'-d'
'--numeric-suffixes[=FROM]'
Use digits in suffixes rather than lower-case letters. The
numerical suffix counts from FROM if specified, 0 otherwise. Note
specifying a FROM value also disables the default auto suffix
length expansion described above, and so you may also want to
specify '-a' to allow suffixes beyond '99'.
'--additional-suffix=SUFFIX'
Append an additional SUFFIX to output file names. SUFFIX must not
contain slash.
'-e'
'--elide-empty-files'
Suppress the generation of zero-length output files. This can
happen with the '--number' option if a file is (truncated to be)
shorter than the number requested, or if a line is so long as to
completely span a chunk. The output file sequence numbers, always
run consecutively even when this option is specified.
'-u'
'--unbuffered'
Immediately copy input to output in '--number r/...' mode, which is
a much slower mode of operation.
'--verbose'
Write a diagnostic just before each output file is opened.
An exit status of zero indicates success, and a nonzero value
indicates failure.
Here are a few examples to illustrate how the '--number' ('-n')
option works:
Notice how, by default, one line may be split onto two or more:
$ seq -w 6 10 > k; split -n3 k; head xa?
==> xaa <==
06
07
==> xab <==
08
0
==> xac <==
9
10
Use the "l/" modifier to suppress that:
$ seq -w 6 10 > k; split -nl/3 k; head xa?
==> xaa <==
06
07
==> xab <==
08
09
==> xac <==
10
Use the "r/" modifier to distribute lines in a round-robin fashion:
$ seq -w 6 10 > k; split -nr/3 k; head xa?
==> xaa <==
06
09
==> xab <==
07
10
==> xac <==
08
You can also extract just the Kth chunk. This extracts and prints
just the 7th "chunk" of 33:
$ seq 100 > k; split -nl/7/33 k
20
21
22
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