The split utility reads file and writes it in linecount-line pieces into a set of output-files. The name of the first output-file is name with aa appended, and so on lexicographically, up to zz (a maximum of 676 files). The maximum length of name is 2 characters less than the maximum filename length allowed by the filesystem. See statvfs(2). If no output name is given, x is used as the default (output-files will be called xaa, xab, and so forth).

The following options are supported:

-linecount | -l linecount

Number of lines in each piece. Defaults to 1000 lines.

-a suffixlength

Uses suffixlength letters to form the suffix portion of the filenames of the split file. If -a is not specified, the default suffix length is 2. If the sum of the name operand and the suffixlength option-argument would create a filename exceeding NAME_MAX bytes, an error will result; split will exit with a diagnostic message and no files will be created.

-b n

Splits a file into pieces n bytes in size.

-b nk

Splits a file into pieces n*1024 bytes in size.

-b nm

Splits a file into pieces n*1048576 bytes in size.

The following operands are supported:

file

The path name of the ordinary file to be split. If no input file is given or file is -, the standard input will be used.

name

The prefix to be used for each of the files resulting from the split operation. If no name argument is given, x will be used as the prefix of the output files. The combined length of the basename of prefix and suffixlength cannot exceed NAME_MAX bytes; see OPTIONS.

See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of split when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2³¹ bytes).

See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of split: LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.

The following exit values are returned:

0

Successful completion.

>0

An error occurred.

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

csplit(1), statvfs(2), attributes(5), environ(5), largefile(5)