uu_cut - Man Page
Prints specified byte or field columns from each line of stdin or the input files
Synopsis
cut [-b|--bytes] [-c|--characters] [-d|--delimiter] [-w ] [-f|--fields] [--complement] [-s|--only-delimited] [-z|--zero-terminated] [--output-delimiter] [-h|--help] [-V|--version] [file]
Description
Prints specified byte or field columns from each line of stdin or the input files
Options
- -b, --bytes=LIST
filter byte columns from the input source
- -c, --characters=LIST
alias for character mode
- -d, --delimiter=DELIM
specify the delimiter character that separates fields in the input source. Defaults to Tab.
- -w
Use any number of whitespace (Space, Tab) to separate fields in the input source (FreeBSD extension).
- -f, --fields=LIST
filter field columns from the input source
- --complement
invert the filter - instead of displaying only the filtered columns, display all but those columns
- -s, --only-delimited
in field mode, only print lines which contain the delimiter
- -z, --zero-terminated
instead of filtering columns based on line, filter columns based on \0 (NULL character)
- --output-delimiter=NEW_DELIM
in field mode, replace the delimiter in output lines with this option's argument
- -h, --help
Print help
- -V, --version
Print version
Extra
Each call must specify a mode (what to use for columns), a sequence (which columns to print), and provide a data source
### Specifying a mode
Use --bytes (-b) or --characters (-c) to specify byte mode
Use --fields (-f) to specify field mode, where each line is broken into fields identified by a delimiter character. For example for a typical CSV you could use this in combination with setting comma as the delimiter
### Specifying a sequence
A sequence is a group of 1 or more numbers or inclusive ranges separated by a commas.
cut -f 2,5-7 some_file.txt
will display the 2nd, 5th, 6th, and 7th field for each source line
Ranges can extend to the end of the row by excluding the second number
cut -f 3- some_file.txt
will display the 3rd field and all fields after for each source line
The first number of a range can be excluded, and this is effectively the same as using 1 as the first number: it causes the range to begin at the first column. Ranges can also display a single column
cut -f 1,3-5 some_file.txt
will display the 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th field for each source line
The --complement option, when used, inverts the effect of the sequence
cut --complement -f 4-6 some_file.txt
will display the every field but the 4th, 5th, and 6th
### Specifying a data source
If no sourcefile arguments are specified, stdin is used as the source of lines to print
If sourcefile arguments are specified, stdin is ignored and all files are read in consecutively if a sourcefile is not successfully read, a warning will print to stderr, and the eventual status code will be 1, but cut will continue to read through proceeding sourcefiles
To print columns from both STDIN and a file argument, use - (dash) as a sourcefile argument to represent stdin.
### Field Mode options
The fields in each line are identified by a delimiter (separator)
#### Set the delimiter
Set the delimiter which separates fields in the file using the --delimiter (-d) option. Setting the delimiter is optional. If not set, a default delimiter of Tab will be used.
If the -w option is provided, fields will be separated by any number of whitespace characters (Space and Tab). The output delimiter will be a Tab unless explicitly specified. Only one of -d or -w option can be specified. This is an extension adopted from FreeBSD.
#### Optionally Filter based on delimiter
If the --only-delimited (-s) flag is provided, only lines which contain the delimiter will be printed
#### Replace the delimiter
If the --output-delimiter option is provided, the argument used for it will replace the delimiter character in each line printed. This is useful for transforming tabular data - e.g. to convert a CSV to a TSV (tab-separated file)
### Line endings
When the --zero-terminated (-z) option is used, cut sees \\0 (null) as the 'line ending' character (both for the purposes of reading lines and separating printed lines) instead of \\n (newline). This is useful for tabular data where some of the cells may contain newlines
will result in 'a\\0c\\0'
Version
v0.0.27