Split a file into two

The easiest way is probably to use head and tail:

$ head -n 1000 input-file > output1
$ tail -n +1001 input-file > output2

That will put the first 1000 lines from input-file into output1, and all lines from 1001 till the end in output2

I think that split is you best approach.

Try using the -l xxxx option, where xxxx is the number of lines you want in each file (default is 1000).

You can use the -n yy option if you are more concerned about the amount of files created. Use -n 2 will split your file in only 2 parts, no matter the amount of lines in each file.

You can count the amount of lines in your file with wc -l filename. This is the 'wordcount' command with the lines option.

References

• man split
• man wc

This is a job for csplit:

csplit -s infile 1001 

will silently split infile, the first piece xx00 - up to but not including line 1001 and the second piece xx01 - the remaining lines.
You can play with the options if you need different output file names e.g. using -f and specifying a prefix:

csplit -sf piece. infile 1001 

produces two files named piece.00 and piece.01

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With a smart head you could also do something like:

{ head -n 1000 > 1st.out; cat > 2nd.out; } < infile