Cut

© November 2003 Tony Lawrence

Having used Unix since before "cut" was apt to be on the machine, I'm used to using "sed" to extract what I want from a line, but "cut" is much easier:

 apl$ cut -d : -f 5 /etc/passwd
Unprivileged User
System Administrator
System Services
Unknown User
Sendmail User
World Wide Web Server
MySQL Server
sshd Privilege separation
Anthony Lawrence
 

Now that's not fun with sed.

Cut can also use character positions:

cut -c 1-8  /etc/passwd
nobody:*
root:*:0
daemon:*
unknown:
smmsp:*:
www:*:70
mysql:*:
sshd:*:7
apl:*:50
 

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