Linux provides an extensive set of tools for manipulating text data. One of such utilities is the split command that is used, as the name suggests, to split large files into smaller files. The split command in Linux divides a file into multiple equal parts, based on the lines or bytes specified by the user.
It's a useful command because of its practical applicability. For instance, if you have a large data file that can't be used efficiently because of its size, then the split command can be used to break up the file into more manageable pieces.
The basic syntax of the split command is:
split [options] [input [prefix]]
By default, the split command divides the file into smaller files of 1000 lines each. If no input file is provided, or if it is given as -, it reads from standard input.
For example, to split a file named 'bigfile.txt' into files of 500 lines each, the command would be:
split -l 500 bigfile.txt