Split (Unix)

The title given to this article is incorrect due to technical limitations. The correct title is split.

split is a Unix utility most commonly used to split a file into one or more other files.

Syntax: split (optional parameters) (incoming filename) (output filename)

The default behaviour of the split command is that it generates output files of 1000 lines in length. The files are named by appending aa, ab, ac, etc., to the output filename. Where the output filename is not supplied the default filename of x is used, e.g. xaa, xbb, etc. When a dash (-) is used instead of a filename, output is derived from standard input.