The split command first appeared in Version 3 Unix[1] and is part of the X/Open Portability Guide since issue 2 of 1987.

[2] The version of split bundled in GNU coreutils was written by Torbjorn Granlund and Richard Stallman.

[3] The split command has also been ported to the IBM i operating system.

The files are named by appending aa, ab, ac, etc.

Additional program options permit a maximum character count (instead of a line count), a maximum line length, how many incrementing characters in generated filenames, and whether to use letters or digits.