Split a text file into multiple files, beyond the {99} limit of csplit

I'd like to split the contents of a .txt file into multiple files, but I'm encountering two questions about limitations of csplit: (1) can anyone offer a way around csplit's maximum limit of '99' file splits? I have a file with up to 384 splits based on a recurring blank line or character. I'd like csplit to be able to accomodate this with {*}, but this exceeds csplit's intrinsic file generation capacity. (2) does anyone know of a way to pass the contents of a file to csplit (pipe to csplit), or can csplit only be used in its conventional way of calling a file in place? i.e. csplit -f split_name file_to_split.txt /split/ {*} vs. [series of commands] | csplit -f split_name /split/ {*} Thank you for any suggestions, or alternatives to accomplish a similar task.