cut

Select 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. Solaris only.

-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. Solaris only.

-s

Use with -f to suppress lines without delimiters.

Examples

Extract usernames and real names from /etc/passwd :

cut -d: -f1,5 /etc/passwd

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