// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did Csplit say to its date? You're a cut above.

csplit
csplit
Operating system	Unix and Unix-like
Platform	Cross-platform
Type	Command
License	GNU GPL v3

csplit is a shell command for splitting a file into two or more smaller files determined by context lines. The command is commonly available on Unix and Unix-like operating systems.

The command is part of the X/Open Portability Guide since issue 2 of 1987. It was inherited into the first version of POSIX and the Single Unix Specification.^[1] It first appeared in PWB UNIX.^[2] The version in GNU coreutils was written by Stuart Kemp and David MacKenzie.^[3] The command is available for Windows via UnxUtils.^[4]

Usage

The command line arguments consist of options, a file path and a list of patterns.

Each patterns is a line number or regular expression. The program outputs pieces of the file separated by the patterns into files xx00, xx01, etc., and outputs the size of each piece, in bytes, to standard output.

Comparison to split

The split command also splits a file into pieces, although the pieces are of a fixed size, measured in lines or bytes.

References

↑ csplit – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 5 from The Open Group
↑ csplit(1) – FreeBSD General Commands Manual
↑ "Csplit(1) - Linux man page". Archived from the original on 2019-07-31. Retrieved 2019-01-26.
↑ "Native Win32 ports of some GNU utilities". unxutils.sourceforge.net. Archived from the original on 2006-02-09. Retrieved 2025-08-09.

External links

csplit: split files based on context – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 5 from The Open Group

[1] csplit – Shell and Utilities Reference, The Single UNIX Specification, Version 5 from The Open Group

[2] csplit(1) – FreeBSD General Commands Manual

[3] "Csplit(1) - Linux man page". Archived from the original on 2019-07-31. Retrieved 2019-01-26.

[4] "Native Win32 ports of some GNU utilities". unxutils.sourceforge.net. Archived from the original on 2006-02-09. Retrieved 2025-08-09.

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v t e Unix command-line utilities and shell builtins
File system	cat chattr chmod chown chgrp cksum cmp cp dd du df file fuser ln ls mkdir mv pax pwd rm rmdir split tee touch type umask
Processes	at bg crontab fg kill nice ps time
User environment	env exit logname mesg talk tput uname who write
Text processing	awk basename comm csplit cut diff dirname ed ex fold head iconv join m4 more nl paste patch printf read sed sort strings tail tr troff uniq vi wc xargs
Shell builtins	alias cd echo test unset wait
Searching	find grep
Documentation	man
Software development	ar ctags lex make nm strip yacc
Miscellaneous	bc cal dc expr lp od sleep true and false
Categories Standard Unix programs Unix SUS2008 utilities List

v t e GNU Core Utilities command-line interface programs
File system	chcon chmod chown chgrp cksum cp dd df dir dircolors install ln ls mkdir mkfifo mknod mktemp mv realpath rm rmdir shred sync touch truncate vdir
Text utilities	b2sum base32 base64 cat cksum comm csplit cut expand fmt fold head join md5sum nl numfmt od paste ptx pr sha1sum shuf sort split sum tac tail tr tsort unexpand uniq wc
Shell utilities	arch basename chroot date dirname du echo env expr factor false groups hostid id link logname nice nohup nproc pathchk pinky printenv printf pwd readlink runcon seq sleep stat stdbuf stty tee test timeout true tty uname unlink uptime users who whoami yes

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// Workers AI · dad joke modeWhat did Csplit say to its date? You're a cut above.

Usage

Comparison to split

See also

References

Further reading

External links