Making Mac OS X split .rar files available to non-mac users

Question

I've split a 8 GB my_doc.rar file into 4 separate files using the following command from my Mac OS X 10.9 terminal

split -b 2000m my_doc.rar my_doc.rar

After splitting the file I've generated: my_doc.raraa, my_doc.rarab, my_doc.rarac, and my_doc.rarad. Can I make the 4 files .rar just by removing the extensions? No, because I tried to extract those using UnRarX by renaming as my_doc1.rar instead of my_doc.raraa, my_doc2.rar instead of my_doc.rarab and so on but it didn’t work! Then how other people would be able to join those using software like WinRaR or UnRarX? Aren’t the generated files .rar files? However, I know I can join those on my Mac by using cat like this:

cat my_doc.rar* > my_doc.rar

But how would I be able to share the big file with people who don’t use a Mac?

Answer 1

I got this from https://superuser.com/a/273380/54036

For splitting files to exact sizes, you could always use the command line tool Linux / Unix tool: split. The windows version is here: http://unxutils.sourceforge.net/

Using the tool you can split files to any size you would like, and you would use "cat" to recombine them.

For example:

split -b=10090000 bigfile.iso bigfile_part.

To split your files to exactly 10090000 bytes. Your output would look something like this:

bigfile_part.aa
bigfile_part.ab, etc.

To recombine just do:

cat bigfile_part* > bigfile.iso

Answer 2

I've split a 8 GB my_doc.rar file into 4 separate files using the following command from my Mac OS X 10.9 terminal split -b 2000m my_doc.rar my_doc.rar

Ok, that cut one rar archive up into four parts.

After splitting the file I've generated: my_doc.raraa, my_doc.rarab, my_doc.rarac, and my_doc.rarad.

Yes, this is the default behavious. The first chunk gets aa appended to the name, the second ab, third ac etc. etc.

Can I make the 4 files .rar just by removing the extensions?

No. Compare it to a book. If you cut a book into four parts then you have four parts. To make it a regular book it needs to have a cover with a title, an index etc etc.

For rar this is similar. It needs the previous parts to work.

how other people would be able to join those using software like WinRaR or UnRarX? Aren’t the generated files .rar files? However, I know I can join those on my Mac by using cat like this:

cat my_doc.rar* > my_doc.rar

In precisely the same way. You cut in in four. And later you appended ('glued') those fouyr back to one piece. In your case you used cat to do that, but there are many ways to do it. One of them which works on windows is copy. (copy /b file1 + file2+ file3 + file4 bigfile)

But how would I be able to share the big file with people who don’t use a Mac?

Let them use their own tools. Or use a different way to share smaller files. a chunked up rar file is a kludge. It would be much better to ask rar to produce a few smaller output files.