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Split Large File

Table of Contents
# Split bigfile.pdf into chunks of 3MB and append one character to each chunk
split -a 1 -b 3m bigfile.pdf smallfile
  • -a how many characters we want to append to each file
  • -b size of each chunk
# Reassemble the file
cat smallfile{a..d} > newbigfile.pdf

Example #

❯ ls -hl
total 18432
-rw-r--r--  1 david  staff   9.0M Sep  9 09:41 bigfile.pdf

❯ split -a 1 -b 3m bigfile.pdf smallfile

❯ ls -hl
total 36864
-rw-r--r--  1 david  staff   9.0M Sep  9 09:41 bigfile.pdf
-rw-r--r--  1 david  staff   3.0M Sep  9 09:41 smallfilea
-rw-r--r--  1 david  staff   3.0M Sep  9 09:41 smallfileb
-rw-r--r--  1 david  staff   3.0M Sep  9 09:41 smallfilec

❯ cat smallfile{a..c} > newbigfile.pdf

❯ ls -hl
total 55296
-rw-r--r--  1 david  staff   9.0M Sep  9 09:41 bigfile.pdf
-rw-r--r--  1 david  staff   9.0M Sep  9 09:41 newbigfile.pdf
-rw-r--r--  1 david  staff   3.0M Sep  9 09:41 smallfilea
-rw-r--r--  1 david  staff   3.0M Sep  9 09:41 smallfileb
-rw-r--r--  1 david  staff   3.0M Sep  9 09:41 smallfilec

❯ shasum -a 256 bigfile.pdf newbigfile.pdf
5ed1980de1fadbc262c0e1a4ecec1f5374d6b1063814fa5f036f79ff8a66e281  bigfile.pdf
5ed1980de1fadbc262c0e1a4ecec1f5374d6b1063814fa5f036f79ff8a66e281  newbigfile.pdf

On Fedora #

# Split bigfile.pdf into chunks of 3MB and append one digit to each chunk
split -a 1 -b 3M -d bigfile.pdf smallfile
  • -a how many characters we want to append to each chunk
  • -b size of each chunk
  • -d use digits for naming each chunk
# Reassemble the file
cat smallfile{0..2} > newbigfile.pdf

# Check hash
sha256sum bigfile.pdf newbigfile.pdf

How to Split and Join Large Files in Linux