All, I'm interesting in implementing this feature. In fact, I already made a quick implementation to play with.
I refer to the original thread : "split behavior" http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2009-09/msg00217.html To summarise it (quick version), in the past the split command provided this unlimited number of split files as its default behavior. But it did not conform to POSIX, so it has been removed (see http://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=coreutils.git;a=commit;h=65cbf7d1). This old behavior was: $ cat /var/log/messages | split -2 - /tmp/x. x.aa x.ab ... x.yz x.zaaa x.zaab ... x.zyzz x.zzaaaa x.zzaaab But, others in the "split behavior" thread propose something like: x.aa ... x.zz x.zzaa ... x.zzzz x.zzzzaa These two possibilities deserves the same goal, split files order, once alphabetically sorted, is the correct order. However, the second possibility does not satisfy me since it will make the use of the --additional-suffix option break this: $ cat /var/log/messages | split --additional-suffix=.txt -2 - /tmp/x. && ls /tmp/x.* | sort x.aa.txt ... x.zy.txt x.zzaa.txt ... x.zztw.txt x.zz.txt <---- :( x.zztx.txt ... Therefore, my opinion is : the old behavior is more adapted to the current split option set. In the "split behavior" thread it was proposed to look at the POSIXLY_CORRECT environment variable to activate or not the unlimited split files behavior. But, I think it's dangerous. Indeed, it breaks the usual files list: x.aa ... x.zz ... vs. x.aa ... x.yz x.zaa .. (the x.zz file does not exist anymore). User may be surprised and older scripts may failed. Maybe adding a new option or a new argument would be fine, I was thinking to the following: * --unlimited-suffixes * --suffix-length=unlimited or --suffix-length=auto With this new option (or argument), user would keep the ability to select the start suffix length. For example: $ cat /var/log/messages | split --suffix-length=auto --suffix-length 3 -2 - /tmp/x. x.aaa <--- start with suffix length = 3 x.aab ... x.yzz x.zaaaa x.zaaab ... x.zyzzz x.zzaaaaa x.zzaaaab Cheers, Jérémy