cat abuse with split
# cat gets used all the time just to pipe the contents of a # file to stdout. # But it is actually for con cat enating files. # It has a partner in crime called split. # Working together they are very powerful for parallel processing. # split - do work in parallel - cat # split then cat will produce out output file which is identical to the input: # Make a 1 gig file of random bytes on my external ssd. time head -c $(( 1024 * 1024 * 1024 )) /dev/urandom > $(mktemp '/DataSwap/big.XXXXXXXX') real 0m5.738s user 0m0.057s sys 0m5.680s # Yey - that was fast! [aturner@Alexanders-MBP ~]$ split -b $(( 1024 * 1024)) /DataSwap/big.* '/DataSwap/parts' [aturner@Alexanders-MBP ~]$ ls /DataSwap/parts* /DataSwap/partsaa /DataSwap/partsgp /DataSwap/partsne /DataSwap/partstt /DataSwap/partszabi /DataSwap/partszahx /DataSwap/partsab /DataSwap/partsgq /DataSwap/partsnf /DataSwap/partstu /DataSwap/partszabj /DataSwap/partszahy /DataSwap/partsac /DataS