split -d

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

pls explain me about split -d option with syntax and an example..

thanks

2 
vnix$ ls -l /etc/motd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 421 2008-09-26 14:40 /var/run/motd
vnix$ split -d -a 4 -b 100 /etc/motd motd.
vnix$ ls -l
total 20
-rw-r--r-- 1 era era 100 2008-09-30 09:52 motd.0000
-rw-r--r-- 1 era era 100 2008-09-30 09:52 motd.0001
-rw-r--r-- 1 era era 100 2008-09-30 09:52 motd.0002
-rw-r--r-- 1 era era 100 2008-09-30 09:52 motd.0003
-rw-r--r-- 1 era era  21 2008-09-30 09:52 motd.0004

-a 4 sets the suffix length to four characters, or with -d, digits.

-b 100 specifies the maximum size of each output file.

The non-option arguments are the input file name and the base file name ("prefix") to use for the output files.