cut.md

title	description	created	updated
cut Linux Command	cut Linux Command is used to extract sections from each line of input or from a file. Extraction of line segments can be done by bytes (-b), characters (-c), fields (-f) or by delimiter (-d) tab character is the default delimiter.	2019-09-11	2019-09-11

cut Linux Command is used to extract sections from each line of input or from a file. Extraction of line segments can be done by bytes (-b), characters (-c), fields (-f) or by delimiter (-d) tab character is the default delimiter.

Segment types

segment	description
-b	bytes
-c	characters
-f	fields
-d	delimiter. Note: tab is the default delimiter

Range specification

Range	description
N	Nth
N-M	N to M
N-	N to end of line
-M	beginning to M

Note: N, M counted from 1, not 0.

Examples

Lets say we have a file foo.txt with following content

abc-def-ghi-jkl
mno-pqr-stu-vwx
123-456-7890

$ cut -c 5-7 foo.txt 
def
pqr
456

$ cut -d "-" -f 1-2 foo.txt 
abc-def
mno-pqr
123-456

$ cut -c 5- foo.txt
def-ghi-jkl
pqr-stu-vwx
456-7890