Unix in a Nutshell, 4th Edition

Name

cut

Synopsis

    cut options [files]

Select a list of columns or fields from one or more files. Either -c or -f must be specified. list is a sequence of integers. Use a comma between separate values and a hyphen to specify a range (e.g., 1-10,15,20 or 50-). See also paste and join.

Common Options

-blist, --byteslist

This list specifies byte positions, not character positions. This is important when multibyte characters are used. With this option, lines should be 1023 bytes or less in size.

-clist, --characterslist

Cut the character positions identified in list.

-dc, --delimiterc

Use with -f to specify field delimiter as character c (default is tab); special characters (e.g., a space) must be quoted.

-flist, --fieldslist

Cut the fields identified in list.

-n

Do not split characters. When used with -b, cut doesn’t split multibyte characters.

-s, --only-delimited

Use with -f to suppress lines without delimiters.

GNU/Linux Option

--output-delimiter= string

Use string as the output delimiter. By default, the output delimiter is the same as the input delimiter.

Examples

Extract usernames and real names from /etc/passwd:

    cut -d: -f1,5 /etc/passwd

Find out who is logged on, but list only login names:

    who | cut -d" " -f1

Cut characters in the fourth column of file, and paste them back as the first column in the same file. Send the results to standard output:

    cut -c4 file | paste -file