Cutting Columns or Fields with cut
| cut+paste | System V includes a nifty command called cut that lets you select a list of columns or fields from one or more files. We've also included a public-domain version on the disc, for those of you whose systems do without. |
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You must specify either the -c option to cut by column or -f to cut by fields. (Fields are separated by tabs unless you specify a different field separator with -d. Use quotes () if you want a space or other special character as the delimiter.)
The column(s) or field(s) to cut must follow the option immediately, without any space. Use a comma between separate values and a hyphen to specify a range (e.g., -10, , , or -).
cut is incredibly handy. Here are some examples:
- Find out who is logged in, but list only login names:
who
%
who | cut -d" " -f1 - Extract usernames and real names from /etc/passwd ():
%
cut -d: -f1,5 /etc/passwd
- Cut characters in the fourth column of file, and paste them back as the first column in the same file:
paste
%
cut -c4file| paste -file
- TOR, DG