cut command in Linux with examples

The cut command in linux is a command for cutting out the sections from each line of files and writing the result to standard output. It can be used to cut parts of a line by byte position, character, and field. The cut command slices a line and extracts the text. It is necessary to specify an option with a command otherwise it gives an error. If more than one file name is provided then data from each file is not preceded by its file name.

Syntax of cut Command

The basic syntax of the cut command is:

cut OPTION... [FILE]...

Where

`OPTION` specifies the desired behavior

`FILE` represents the input file.

Note: If FILE is not specified, `cut` reads from standard input (stdin).

Options Available in cut Command

Here is a list of the most commonly used options with the `cut` command:

Practical Examples of cut Command

Let us consider two files having name state.txt and capital.txt contains 5 names of the Indian states and capitals respectively.

$ cat state.txt
Andhra Pradesh
Arunachal Pradesh
Assam
Bihar
Chhattisgarh

Without any option specified it displays error.

$ cut state.txt
cut: you must specify a list of bytes, characters, or fields
Try 'cut --help' for more information.

Extract Specific Bytes (-b) Using cut Command

-b(byte): To extract the specific bytes, you need to follow -b option with the list of byte numbers separated by comma. Range of bytes can also be specified using the hyphen(-). It is necessary to specify list of byte numbers otherwise it gives error.

Tabs and backspaces are treated like as a character of 1 byte.

List without ranges:

cut -b 1,2,3 state.txt

list without range

List with ranges:

cut -b 1-3,5-7 state.txt

list with range

It uses a special form for selecting bytes from beginning upto the end of the line:

Special Form: Selecting bytes from beginning to end of line

In this, 1- indicate from 1st byte to end byte of a line

cut -b 1- state.txt

special form with -b option

In this, -3 indicate from 1st byte to 3rd byte of a line

cut -b -3 state.txt

special form -b option

Cut by Character (-c) Using cut Command

-c (column): To cut by character use the -c option. This selects the characters given to the -c option. This can be a list of numbers separated comma or a range of numbers separated by hyphen(-).

Tabs and backspaces are treated as a character. It is necessary to specify list of character numbers otherwise it gives error with this option.

Syntax:

cut -c [(k)-(n)/(k),(n)/(n)] filename

Here,k denotes the starting position of the character and n denotes the ending position of the character in each line, if k and n are separated by “-” otherwise they are only the position of character in each line from the file taken as an input.

Extract specific characters:

cut -c 2,5,7 state.txt

Extract specific characters

Above cut command prints second, fifth and seventh character from each line of the file.

Extract first seven characters:

cut -c 1-7 state.txt

Extract first seven characters

Above cut command prints first seven characters of each line from the file. Cut uses a special form for selecting characters from beginning upto the end of the line:

Special Form: Selecting characters from beginning to end of line

cut -c 1- state.txt

selecting characters from beginning to end of line using -c option

Above command prints starting from first character to end. Here in command only starting position is specified and the ending position is omitted.

cut -c -5 state.txt

selecting characters from beginning to end of line using -c option

Above command prints starting position to the fifth character. Here the starting position is omitted and the ending position is specified.

Cut by Field (-f) Using cut Command

-f (field): -c option is useful for fixed-length lines. Most unix files doesn’t have fixed-length lines. To extract the useful information you need to cut by fields rather than columns. List of the fields number specified must be separated by comma. Ranges are not described with -f option. cut uses tab as a default field delimiter but can also work with other delimiter by using -d option.

Note: Space is not considered as delimiter in UNIX.

Syntax:

cut -d "delimiter" -f (field number) file.txt

Extract first field :

Like in the file state.txt fields are separated by space if -d option is not used then it prints whole line:

cut -f 1 state.txt

Extract first field using -f option

If `-d` option is used then it considered space as a field separator or delimiter:

cut -d " " -f 1 state.txt

space as a field separator or delimiter

Extract fields 1 to 4:

Command prints field from first to fourth of each line from the file.

cut -d " " -f 1-4 state.txt

Command prints field from first to fourth

Complement Output (--complement) Using cut Command

–complement: As the name suggests it complement the output. This option can be used in the combination with other options either with -f or with -c.

cut --complement -d " " -f 1 state.txt

–complement

cut --complement -c 5 state.txt

–complement

Output Delimiter (--output-delimiter) Using cut Command

–output-delimiter: By default the output delimiter is same as input delimiter that we specify in the cut with -d option. To change the output delimiter use the option –output-delimiter=”delimiter”.

cut -d " " -f 1,2 state.txt --output-delimiter='%'

Here cut command changes delimiter(%) in the standard output between the fields which is specified by using -f option .

Display Version (--version) Using cut Command

–version: This option is used to display the version of cut which is currently running on your system.

cut --version

display version of cut command

How to use tail with pipes(|) in cut Command

The cut command can be piped with many other commands of the unix. In the following example output of the cat command is given as input to the cut command with -f option to sort the state names coming from file state.txt in the reverse order.

cat state.txt | cut -d ' ' -f 1 | sort -r

using tail with pipe (|) in cut command

It can also be piped with one or more filters for additional processing. Like in the following example, we are using cat, head and cut command and whose output is stored in the file name list.txt using directive(>).

cat state.txt | head -n 3 | cut -d ' ' -f 1 > list.txt

cat list.txt

redirecting output in different file

cut -d',' -f1,3 data.csv > output.txt

Conclusion

In this article we discussed the `cut` command in Linux which is a versatile tool for extracting specific sections from files based on byte position, character, or field. It slices lines of text and outputs the extracted data. Failure to specify an option with the cut command results in an error. Multiple files can be processed, but the output does not include the file names. Options such as `-b`, `-c`, and `-f` allow extraction by byte, character, and field, respectively. The --complement option inverts the selection, printing what is not selected, and --output-delimiter changes the output delimiter. The command also includes options for version display and can be used in combination with other commands through pipes for additional processing.

cut command in Linux with examples – FAQs

What is cut in Linux command?

The cut command is used to extract sections from each line of input data. It can extract based on character, byte, or field (column) positions. This command is commonly used in text processing and data manipulation tasks.

How to Cut a File in Linux Terminal?

To “cut” in the context of the cut command means to extract specific parts of a file. Here are some examples of how to use the cut command:

Extracting Columns by Delimiter

Assuming you have a file called data.txt with the following content:

name,age,city
Alice,30,New York
Bob,25,Los Angeles
Charlie,35,Chicago

To extract the first column (names):

cut -d',' -f1 data.txt

Output:

name
Alice
Bob
Charlie

Extracting Specific Characters

If you want to extract the first five characters of each line:

cut -c1-5 data.txt

Output:

name,
Alice
Bob,2
Charl

How to Cut a Word in Linux?

To cut a word from each line in a file, use the cut or awk command:

• Using cut: Extract the second word.
• Using awk

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqM7alHXFySFc4KtwEZTANgmyJm3NqS_L

Comment

More info

Advertise with us

Next Article

tr command in Unix/Linux with examples

GeeksforGeeks

Improve

Article Tags :

• Linux-Unix
• linux-command
• Linux-Shell-Commands