cut —
select portions of each line of a file
cut |
-b
list
[-n
]
[file ... ] |
cut |
-f
list
[-s
]
[-d
delim
]
[file ... ] |
The
cut utility selects portions of each line
(as specified by
list) from each
file and writes them to the standard output.
If no
file arguments are specified, or a file
argument is a single dash (‘-’),
cut reads from the standard input. The
items specified by
list can be in terms of
column position or in terms of fields delimited by a special character. Column
and field numbering starts from 1; output is in the same order as input, not
in the order selected.
list is a comma or whitespace separated set of
numbers and/or number ranges. Number ranges consist of a number, a dash
(‘-’), and a second number which select the fields or columns
from the first number to the second, inclusive. Numbers or number ranges may
be preceded by a dash, which selects all fields or columns from 1 to the first
number. Numbers or number ranges may be followed by a dash, which selects all
fields or columns from the last number to the end of the line. Numbers and
number ranges may be repeated, overlapping, and in any order. It is not an
error to select fields or columns not present in the input line.
The options are as follows:
-
-
-b
list- The list specifies byte positions.
-
-
-c
list- The list specifies character
positions.
-
-
-d
delim- Use the first character of delim as the
field delimiter character. The default is the ⟨TAB⟩
character.
-
-
-f
list- The list specifies fields, separated by
the field delimiter character. The selected fields are output, separated
by the field delimiter character.
-
-
-n- Do not split multi-byte characters. A character is written to standard
output if and only if the byte position holding its last byte is
selected.
-
-
-s- Suppresses lines with no field delimiter characters. Unless specified,
lines with no delimiters are passed through unmodified.
-
-
LC_CTYPE- The character encoding
locale(1). It decides which
byte sequences form characters. If unset or set to “C”,
“POSIX”, or an unsupported value,
-c does the same as
-b,
-n has no effect, and
-d uses the first byte of
delim.
The
cut utility exits 0 if all input files
are output successfully, and >0 if an error occurs.
Extract login names and shells from the system
passwd(5) file as
“name:shell” pairs:
$ cut -d : -f 1,7
/etc/passwd
Show the names and login times of logged in users:
$ who | cut -c 1-8,18-30
awk(1),
paste(1)
The
cut utility is compliant with the
IEEE Std 1003.1-2008
(“POSIX.1”) specification.
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