cut.md

The numeric ranges of the Unix command "cut"

Use single numbers to extract one specific field:

$ echo "one:two:three:four:five:six" | cut -d : -f 1
one
$ echo "one:two:three:four:five:six" | cut -d : -f 4
four

Use commas to inform more than one field:

$ echo "one:two:three:four:five:six" | cut -d : -f 1,4
one:four

Note that inverting the order will not invert the output:

$ echo "one:two:three:four:five:six" | cut -d : -f 4,1
one:four

Use an hyphen to inform a range of fields, from one to four:

$ echo "one:two:three:four:five:six" | cut -d : -f 1-4
one:two:three:four

If you omit the second range number, it matches until the last:

$ echo "one:two:three:four:five:six" | cut -d : -f 4-
four:five:six

cut is cool, isn't it?

Note: To automatically test all the shell commands in this article, just run: clitest --prefix tab cut.md