Bash Splitting Files Split a file
Example
Running the split command without any options will split a file into 1 or more separate files containing up to 1000 lines each.
split file
This will create files named xaa, xab, xac, etc, each containing up to 1000 lines. As you can see, all of them are prefixed with the letter x by default. If the initial file was less than 1000 lines, only one such file would be created.
To change the prefix, add your desired prefix to the end of the command line
split file customprefix
Now files named customprefixaa, customprefixab, customprefixac etc. will be created
To specify the number of lines to output per file, use the -l option. The following will split a file into a maximum of 5000 lines
split -l5000 file
OR
split --lines=5000 file
Alternatively, you can specify a maximum number of bytes instead of lines. This is done by using the -b or --bytes options. For example, to allow a maximum of 1MB
split --bytes=1MB file
