Cut (Unix) - Examples

Examples

Assuming a file named file containing the lines:

foo:bar:baz:qux:quux one:two:three:four:five:six:seven alpha:beta:gamma:delta:epsilon:zeta:eta:teta:iota:kappa:lambda:mu the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

To output the fourth through tenth characters of each line:

% cut -c 4-10 file

This gives the output:

:bar:ba :two:th ha:beta quick

To output the fifth field through the end of the line of each line using the colon character as the field delimiter:

% cut -d ":" -f 5- file

This gives the output:

quux five:six:seven epsilon:zeta:eta:teta:iota:kappa:lambda:mu the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

(note that because the colon character is not found in the last line the entire line is shown)

Option -d specified a single character delimiter (in the example above it is a colon) which serves as field separator. option -f which specifies range of fields included in the output (here fields range from five till the end ). Option -d presuppose usage of option -f.

To output the third field of each line using space as the field delimiter:

% cut -d " " -f 3 file

This gives the output:

foo:bar:baz:qux:quux one:two:three:four:five:six:seven alpha:beta:gamma:delta:epsilon:zeta:eta:teta:iota:kappa:lambda:mu brown

(Note that because the space character is not found in the first three lines these entire lines are shown.)