Split (Unix)

codice_1 is a utility on Unix, Plan 9, and Unix-like operating systems most commonly used to split a computer file into two or more smaller files.
History.
The command first appeared in Version 3 Unix and is part of the X/Open Portability Guide since issue 2 of 1987. It was inherited into the first version of POSIX.1 and the Single Unix Specification. The version of codice_1 bundled in GNU coreutils was written by Torbjorn Granlund and Richard Stallman. The command has also been ported to the IBM i operating system.
Usage.
The command-syntax is:
 split [OPTION] [INPUT [PREFIX]]
The default behavior of codice_1 is to generate output files of a fixed size, default 1000 lines. The files are named by appending "aa", "ab", "ac", etc. to "output filename". If "output filename" is not given, the default filename of "x" is used, for example, "xaa", "xab", etc. When a hyphen ("-") is used instead of "input filename", data is derived from standard input. The files are typically rejoined using a utility such as cat.
Additional program options permit a maximum character count (instead of a line count), a maximum line length, how many incrementing characters in generated filenames, and whether to use letters or digits.
Split file into pieces.
Create a file named "codice_4" with exactly 3,000 lines of data:
$ head -3000 < /dev/urandom > myfile.txt
Now, use the codice_1 command to break this file into pieces (note: unless otherwise specified, codice_1 will break the file into 1,000-line files):
$ split myfile.txt
$ ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 761K Jun 16 18:17 myfile.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 242K Jun 16 18:17 xaa
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 263K Jun 16 18:17 xab
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 256K Jun 16 18:17 xac
$ wc --lines xa*
 1000 xaa
 1000 xab
 1000 xac
 3000 total
As seen above, the codice_1 command has broken the original file (keeping the original intact) into three, equal in number of lines (i.e., 1,000), files: codice_8, codice_9, and codice_10.