Linux Pocket Guide, 2nd Edition

Name

cut — stdin  stdout  - file  -- opt  --help  --version

Synopsis

cut -(b|c|f)range [options] [files]

The cut command extracts columns of text from files. A “column” is defined by character offsets (e.g., the nineteenth character of each line):

$ cut -c19 myfile

or by byte offsets (which are often the same as characters, unless you have multibyte characters in your language):

$ cut -b19 myfile

or by delimited fields (e.g., the fifth field in each line of a comma-delimited file):

$ cut -f5 -d, myfile

You aren’t limited to printing a single column: you can provide a range (3-16), a comma-separated sequence (3,4,5,6,8,16), or both (3,4,8-16). For ranges, if you omit the first number (-16), a 1 is assumed (1-16); if you omit the last number (5-), the end of line is used.

Useful options

-d C	Use character C as the input delimiter character between fields for the -f option. By default it’s a tab character.
--output-delimiter=C	Use character C as the output delimiter character between fields for -f. By default it’s a tab character.
-s	Suppress (don’t print) lines that don’t contain the delimiter character.