How Do You Split a File by Line Number in Unix?

If you use the -l (a lowercase L) option, replace linenumber with the number of lines you’d like in each of the smaller files (the default is 1,000). If you use the -b option, replace bytes with the number of bytes you’d like in each of the smaller files.

How do I split the number of lines in a file?

If you want your file to be split based on the number of lines in each chunk rather than the number of bytes, you can use the -l (lines) option. In this example, each file will have 1,000 lines except, of course, for the last one which may have fewer lines.

How do you split two files in UNIX?

Try using the -l xxxx option, where xxxx is the number of lines you want in each file (default is 1000). You can use the -n yy option if you are more concerned about the amount of files created. Use -n 2 will split your file in only 2 parts, no matter the amount of lines in each file.