cut

Cut Command

The cut command is a text processing utility that allows you to cut out sections of each line from a file or output, and display it on the standard output (usually, the terminal). It’s commonly used in scripts and pipelines, especially for file operations and text manipulation.

This command is extremely helpful when you only need certain parts of the file, such as a column, a range of columns, or a specific field. For example, with Linux system logs or CSV files, you might only be interested in certain bits of information.

A basic syntax of cut command is:

cut OPTION... [FILE]...

Here’s an example of how you might use the cut command in Linux:

echo "one,two,three,four" | cut -d "," -f 2

This command will output the second field (two) by using the comma as a field delimiter (-d ",").

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Cut Command