How to split large text file in windows?

Albin picture Albin · Aug 3, 2015 · Viewed 115.8k times · Source

I have a log file with size of 2.5 GB. Is there any way to split this file into smaller files using windows command prompt?

Answer

Josh Withee picture Josh Withee · Aug 24, 2018

If you have installed Git for Windows, you should have Git Bash installed, since that comes with Git.

Use the split command in Git Bash to split a file:

  • into files of size 500MB each: split myLargeFile.txt -b 500m

  • into files with 10000 lines each: split myLargeFile.txt -l 10000

Tips:

  • If you don't have Git/Git Bash, download at https://git-scm.com/download

  • If you lost the shortcut to Git Bash, you can run it using C:\Program Files\Git\git-bash.exe

That's it!


I always like examples though...

Example:

enter image description here

You can see in this image that the files generated by split are named xaa, xab, xac, etc.

These names are made up of a prefix and a suffix, which you can specify. Since I didn't specify what I want the prefix or suffix to look like, the prefix defaulted to x, and the suffix defaulted to a two-character alphabetical enumeration.

Another Example:

This example demonstrates

  • using a filename prefix of MySlice (instead of the default x),
  • the -d flag for using numerical suffixes (instead of aa, ab, ac, etc...),
  • and the option -a 5 to tell it I want the suffixes to be 5 digits long:

enter image description here