xref: /freebsd/usr.bin/split/split.1 (revision c3aac50f284c6cca5b4f2eb46aaa13812cb8b630)

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.\"	@(#)split.1	8.3 (Berkeley) 4/16/94
.\" $FreeBSD$
.\"
.Dd April 16, 1994
.Dt SPLIT 1
.Os
.Sh NAME
.Nm split
.Nd split a file into pieces
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm split
.Op Fl b Ar byte_count[k|m]
.Op Fl l Ar line_count
.Op Fl p Ar pattern
.Op Ar file Op Ar name
.Sh DESCRIPTION
The
.Nm split
utility reads the given
.Ar file
(or standard input if no file is specified)
and breaks it up into files of 1000 lines each.
.Pp
The options are as follows:
.Bl -tag -width Ds
.It Fl b
Create smaller files
.Ar byte_count
bytes in length.
If
.Dq Li k
is appended to the number, the file is split into
.Ar byte_count
kilobyte pieces.
If
.Dq Li m
is appended to the number, the file is split into
.Ar byte_count
megabyte pieces.
.It Fl l
Create smaller files
.Ar n
lines in length.
.It Fl p Ar pattern
The file is split whenever an input line matches
.Ar pattern ,
which is interpreted as an extended regular expression.
The matching line will be the first line of the next output file.
This option is incompatible with the
.Fl b
and
.Fl l
options.
.El
.Pp
If additional arguments are specified, the first is used as the name
of the input file which is to be split.
If a second additional argument is specified, it is used as a prefix
for the names of the files into which the file is split.
In this case, each file into which the file is split is named by the
prefix followed by a lexically ordered suffix in the range of
.Dq Li aa-zz .
.Pp
If the
.Ar name
argument is not specified, the file is split into lexically ordered
files named in the range of
.Dq Li xaa-zzz .
.Sh BUGS
For historical reasons, if you specify
.Ar name ,
.Nm split
can only create 676 separate
files.
The default naming convention allows 2028 separate files.
.Pp
The maximum line length for matching patterns is 65536.
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr re_format 7 .
.Sh HISTORY
A
.Nm split
command appeared in
.At v6 .