How to make multiple small file out of a single file?

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

I have a file that consist of around six million line, now the task is to divide this file into 12 small file so that each file would have half a million lines in it.

Thanks.

2

Read the man page for split .

1 Like
3

You can use sed and do it in a very nice way.

$ sed 1,500000p

or something like that.

Don't use split for straight forward line splitting.

-Girish

4

Absolutely terrible advice.

split is the perfect tool for the job. This task requires a little arithmetic and creating multiple files with unique names. split handles both. sed handles neither.

Ironically, your "straight forward" sed suggestion is seriously broken: sed 1,500000p will print the first 500000 lines twice and the next 11.5 million once.

Regards and welcome to the forum,
Alister