* 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.
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.