"In fact, I vaguely remember splitting large files into smaller ones with numerical filenames, which I prefer. I also remember not having to worry about suffixe

"In fact, I vaguely remember splitting large files into smaller ones with numerical filenames, which I prefer. I also remember not having to worry about suffixes in the past. But numerical filenames didn't seem to be an option with split installed on Mac OS X - there was no mention of it in the manual." If splitting by line, BSD csplit can output numerical filenames. wc -l file 4000 csplit -s -n 4 file '/$/' '{3998}' ls xx???? xx0000 xx0001 xx0002 ... xx3999