Commands: Cut

Example Text

Select Column

Cut command provides ability to select specified column according to character number for all rows. Here we will print all rows 3 character line by line to the console. This will only print single character.

1	$ cut -c3 fruits.txt

Select Column

Select Column For Character Range

In previous example we have printed single character to the terminal. We can also print multiple characters to the console by specifying character range like below. We can see that character index starts from 1.

1	$ cut -c1-6 fruits.txt

Select Column For Character Range

Select Column Using Start Position

Another useful feature of cut is specifying only start position up to end.

1	$ cut -c3- fruits.txt

Select Column Using Start Position

Select Column Using End Position

We can print range from start to the specified position only specifying end position. This will assume start position as 1

1	$ cut -c-3 fruits.txt

Select Column Using End Position

Select Single Field

Field is some part of text delimited with specific characters like space,tab, double comma etc. We can select text with field number. By default field delimiter is tab. Our text is all ready provides tab for delimitation. In this example we will select 3. field.

1	$ cut -f3 fruits.txt

Select Single Field

Select Multiple Fields

As we do in characters we can also specify field range. We will select fruit names and counts with the following command.

1	$ cut -f1-2 fruits.txt

Select Multiple Fields

Following example selects more than one field one by one not using ranges.

1	$ cut  -f1,2,3 fruits.txt

Select Multiple Fields

Last Field

One of most popular usage of cut is printing last field. The problem is that field count may change according to text and we can not specify last field only using cut command. Following example uses rev command to get last field.

1	$ cat fruits.txt | rev | cut -f1 | rev

Last Field

Select Fields Include Specified Chars

By default cut do not have the ability to exclude lines acorrding to characters but grep can be used easily to implement this feature. We will only select rows contain app

1	$ grep 'app' fruits.txt | cut -f1-2

Select Fields Include Specified Chars

Select Fields Except Specified Chars

We can reverse the previous example and remove unwanted rows. We will remove lines contains app and then print columns from 1 to 2 .

1	$ grep -v 'app' fruits.txt | cut -f1-2

Select Fields Except Specified Chars

Specify Delimiter

Delimiter is used to divide fields. By default tab is used as delimiter. But it can be specified with -d option like below. Following example we use : as delimiter because the passwd file uses it. Then we only want to show user names those resides in field 1.

$ cut -d: -f1 /etc/passwd

Specify Delimiter

Print Except Fields

As we see previously fields can be printed as ranges too. We can also print by excepting fields. This will print all renaming fields. Following example we can want to print all fields except 2 .

Change Delimiter

Text may have delimiters by default. In some situations we may want to change delimiter while printing to the console. --output-delimiter option can be used for this operation. Following example will change tab delimiter to the comma.

1	$ cut  -f1,2,3 --output-delimiter=',' fruits.txt

Change Delimiter