split(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | AUTHOR | REPORTING BUGS | COPYRIGHT | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

SPLIT(1)                      User Commands                     SPLIT(1)

NAME         top

       split - split a file into pieces

SYNOPSIS         top

       split [OPTION]... [FILE [PREFIX]]

DESCRIPTION         top

       Output pieces of FILE to PREFIXaa, PREFIXab, ...; default size is
       1000 lines, and default PREFIX is 'x'.

       With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

       Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short
       options too.

       -a, --suffix-length=N
              generate suffixes of length N (default 2)

       --additional-suffix=SUFFIX
              append an additional SUFFIX to file names

       -b, --bytes=SIZE
              put SIZE bytes per output file

       -C, --line-bytes=SIZE
              put at most SIZE bytes of records per output file

       -d     use numeric suffixes starting at 0, not alphabetic

       --numeric-suffixes[=FROM]
              same as -d, but allow setting the start value

       -x     use hex suffixes starting at 0, not alphabetic

       --hex-suffixes[=FROM]
              same as -x, but allow setting the start value

       -e, --elide-empty-files
              do not generate empty output files with '-n'

       --filter=COMMAND
              write to shell COMMAND; file name is $FILE

       -l, --lines=NUMBER
              put NUMBER lines/records per output file

       -n, --number=CHUNKS
              generate CHUNKS output files; see explanation below

       -t, --separator=SEP
              use SEP instead of newline as the record separator; '\0'
              (zero) specifies the NUL character

       -u, --unbuffered
              immediately copy input to output with '-n r/...'

       --verbose
              print a diagnostic just before each output file is opened

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
              output version information and exit

       The SIZE argument is an integer and optional unit (example: 10K
       is 10*1024).  Units are K,M,G,T,P,E,Z,Y,R,Q (powers of 1024) or
       KB,MB,... (powers of 1000).  Binary prefixes can be used, too:
       KiB=K, MiB=M, and so on.

   CHUNKS may be:
       N      split into N files based on size of input

       K/N    output Kth of N to stdout

       l/N    split into N files without splitting lines/records

       l/K/N  output Kth of N to stdout without splitting lines/records

       r/N    like 'l' but use round robin distribution

       r/K/N  likewise but only output Kth of N to stdout

AUTHOR         top

       Written by Torbjorn Granlund and Richard M. Stallman.

REPORTING BUGS         top

       GNU coreutils online help:
       <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
       Report any translation bugs to
       <https://translationproject.org/team/>

COPYRIGHT         top

       Copyright © 2024 Free Software Foundation, Inc.  License GPLv3+:
       GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute
       it.  There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

SEE ALSO         top

       Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/split>
       or available locally via: info '(coreutils) split invocation'

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the coreutils (basic file, shell and text
       manipulation utilities) project.  Information about the project
       can be found at ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  If you
       have a bug report for this manual page, see
       ⟨http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/⟩.  This page was obtained
       from the tarball coreutils-9.5.tar.xz fetched from
       ⟨http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/coreutils/⟩ on 2024-06-14.  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
       the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original
       manual page), send a mail to [email protected]

GNU coreutils 9.5              March 2024                       SPLIT(1)