Mac OS X in a Nutshell

Name

cut

Synopsis

cut options [files]

Selects 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.

Options

-b list

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.

-c list

Cut the character positions identified in list.

-d c

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

-f list

Cut the fields identified in list.

-n

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

-s

Use with -f to suppress lines without delimiters.

Examples

Display only ping times while pinging a host:

                     ping 192.168.10.58 | cut -sd= -f4

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