Check the number of lines in a text file using the wc command, which stands for “word count”.

$ wc -l access.log
146330 access.log

We’re way over our limit. We’ll need to split this into 3 segments. We’ll use the split utility to do this.

$ split -l 60000 access.log
$ ls -l
total 79124
-rw-rw-r– 1 root root 40465200 2006-09-19 12:00 access.log
-rw-rw-r– 1 root root 16598163 2006-09-19 12:05 xaa
-rw-rw-r– 1 root root 16596545 2006-09-19 12:05 xab
-rw-rw-r– 1 root root 7270492 2006-09-19 12:05 xac

We’ve now split our text file into 3 separate files, each containing 60,000 lines or less. The last file contains the leftover amount. You can rename the individual chunks using the mv command.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *