bug#9455: RFE: split --balanced

[Pádraig Brady]

On 09/07/2011 01:55 AM, Dave Yost wrote:
> Z% for x in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
> for> do echo $x ; done | split --lines=3 \
> pipe> && for x in x?? ; do echo "=== $x" ; cat $x ; done
> === xaa
> 1
> 2
> 3
> === xab
> 4
> 5
> 6
> === xac
> 7
> 
> In some applications, you would like split to more evenly apportion the 
> output to the files, like this:
> 
> Z% for x in 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
> for> do echo $x ; done | split --balanced --lines=3 \
> pipe> && for x in x?? ; do echo "=== $x" ; cat $x ; done
> === xaa
> 1
> 2
> 3
> === xab
> 4
> 5
> === xac
> 6
> 7
> 

So you'd like to distribute evenly across the last 2 buckets.
It seems like it would be more general to specify the number of buckets
instead and let split balance across them all, which is supported recently.

$ seq 7 | split -nr/3; tail x??
==> xaa <==
1
4
7

==> xab <==
2
5

==> xac <==
3
6

$ seq 7 > 7; split -nl/3 7; tail x??
==> xaa <==
1
2

==> xab <==
3
4

==> xac <==
5
6
7

Would that suffice?

cheers,
Pádraig.