Split: how to split into different percentages?

Question

How can I split a text file into 70% and 30% using the split command ?

Are you wedded to using the split command? If not, you can easily do this with straight text manipulation, certainly using perl or python. As long as the file is not too wrong, read it in to memory as a string, then split the string. If the file is too big, then more work is needed.
@Faheem Mitha The file is 64MB. I like the idea to use split because it is faster than writing code. I was wonder now if I specify the number of lines corresponding 70% of the file, I get a big file and a small file. Shouldn't it work ?
Please share your answer. (meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/12513/…)

forcefsck · Accepted Answer · 2011-03-28 10:01:23Z

The commands below will work for percentages above 50% (if you want to split only into two files), quick and dirty approach.

1) split 70% based on lines

split -l $[ $(wc -l filename|cut -d" " -f1) * 70 / 100 ] filename

2) split 70% based on bytes

split -b $[ $(wc -c filename|cut -d" " -f1) * 70 / 100 ] filename

1 Answer