* On Tuesday, January 12, 2021 07:31, "Pádraig Brady" said: > The disadvantage is that we'd be pulling some wc logic into split, > but it wouldn't be providing any efficiency advantages. > Achieving this in shell is also simple enough and portable > > lines=$(($(wc -l < "file") / 2)) > split -l $lines file
You're not wrong that it's simple enough and portable (that's what I did myself when I had to do the next data set in the project)...but it's also equally applicable to bytes, so why have split count the number of bytes in the input when another tool could do that? bytes=$(($(wc -c < "file") / 2)) split -b $bytes file I know this example is a little pedantic and/or facetious, and I'm not trying to be snarky here (well, maybe a little snarky? :)); the goal here is just to illustrate that while I agree that "do one thing and do it well" is a very noble goal, sometimes there's such a thing as being _too_ modular. Also, bonus points for anybody who's silently saying my "wc -c" example is flawed if the file contains multi-byte characters. :D On the other hand, its not being worth the effort _is_ a valid argument in my book; it's up to the people actually doing the work whether they think their effort is justified. I know _I_ would like it, but I assume I'm an edge case since split has existed this long without this feature and I can only speak for myself.
