cut

- cut out selected fields of each line of a file

Synopsis

/usr/bin/cut

/usr/bin/cut [-options] [file ...]

ksh93

cut [-options] [file ...]

Description

cut cuts bytes, characters, or character-delimited fields from one or more files, and concatenates them on standard output.

The option argument list is a comma-separated or blank-separated list of positive numbers and ranges. Ranges can be of three forms. The first is two positive integers separated by a hyphen (low-high), which represents all fields from low to high. The second is a positive number preceded by a hyphen (-high), which represents all fields from field 1 to high. The last is a positive number followed by a hyphen (low-), which represents all fields from low to the last field, inclusive. Elements in the list can be repeated, can overlap, and can appear in any order. The order of the output is that of the input.

One and only one of -b, -c, or -f options must be specified.

If no file is given, or if the file is -, cut cuts from standard input. The start of the file is defined as the current offset.

Options

The following options are supported:

-b

--bytes=list

Cut based on a list of bytes.

-c

--characters=list

Cut based on a list of characters.

-d

--delimiter=delim

The field character for the -f option is set to delim. The default is the TAB character.

-f

--fields=list

Cut based on fields separated by the delimiter character specified with the -d option.

-n

--nosplit

Do not split characters.

-R | r

--reclen=reclen

If reclen > 0, the input will be read as fixed length records of length reclen when used with the -b or -c option.

-s

--suppress|only-delimited

Suppress lines with no delimiter characters, when used with the -foption. By default, lines with no delimiters are passed in untouched.

-D

--line-delimeter|output-delimiter=ldelim

The line delimiter character for the -f option is set to ldelim. The default is the NEWLINE character.

-N

--nonewline

Do not output NEWLINEs at end of each record when used with the -b or -c option.

--man

--html

--nroff

Print built-in manual page in either plain text, HTML or nroff format.

--help

Print basic help information.

--version

Print version information.

Operands

The following operands are supported:

file

A path name of an input file. If no file operands are specified, or if a file operand is -, the standard input will be used

Usage

See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of cut when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte (2³¹ bytes).

Examples

Example 1 Mapping user IDs

A mapping of user IDs to names follows:

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

Example 2 Setting the Current login name

To set name to current login name:

example$ name=$(who am i | cut -f1 -d' ')

Environment Variables

See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of cut: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH.

Exit Status

The following exit values are returned:

0

All input files were output successfully.

>0

An error occurred.

Attributes

See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes:

See Also

grep(1), ksh93(1), paste(1), attributes(5), environ(5), largefile(5), standards(5)