\_ Uhh, what version of split are you using? Last I checked, all versions of split I had run into split files by linefeeds, and only some supported the -b option (mostly, the newer ones).
\_ 
\_ Are you positive about this? If so, is it a recent lobotomy, and is
\_ it common?

Well I don't think it was a lobotomy, but maybe the trepanation went a
bit deep.  I self confused over what the -l (lines) argument did to
split.  My bad.  

Remember, reading man pages is an art, and I just colored over my
split page in crayon.

:-)

David