Cut Command in Linux

The cut is a command-line utility to cut parts of lines from specified files and writing the result to standard output. It can be used to cut parts of a line by byte position, character and delimiter. In this guide, we will show you how to use cut command in Linux with examples.

How to Use the cut Command#

Following is the basic syntax of Cut command:

cut OPTION... [FILE]...

The options tells cut whether to use a delimiter, byte position, or character when cutting out selected portions the lines. You can use any one option at a time out of as following:

• -f (--fields=LIST) – It used when need to select by specifying a field, a set of fields, or a range of fields.
• -b (--bytes=LIST) – Select by specifying a byte, a set of bytes, or a range of bytes.
• -c (--characters=LIST) – Select by specifying a character, a set of characters, or a range of characters.

You also can use other options listed below:

• -d (--delimiter) – To specify a delimiter as replacement of of the default “TAB” delimiter.
• --complement – To display all bytes, characters, or fields except the selected.
• –s (--only-delimited) Prints the lines that only contain delimiter character
• --output-delimiter – To specify a different output delimiter string.

How to Cut by Field#

To cut the specified fields use command with the -f option. “TAB” is the default delimiter if not specified.

Y-2019	Allen	K-100	NY
Y-2020	John	K-200	NJ

For instance, to display the 2nd and 3rd field you would use:

cut sales.txt -f 2,3

Allen	K-100
John	K-200

How to cut based on a delimiter#

Use option -d followed by the delimiter you want to use with cut command to cut based on a delimiter.

For example, to display the 1st and 3rd fields using “-” as a delimiter, you would type:

cut sales.txt -d '-' -f 1,3

Y-100	NY
Y-200	NJ

How to complement the selection#

To complement the selection field list use --complement option. This will print only those fields that are not selected with the -f option.

cut sales.txt -f 2,4 --complement

The above command will print all field except the 2nd and 4th:

Y-2019	100K
Y-2020	200K

How to specify an output delimiter#

Use the --output-delimiter option to specify the output delimiter. For instance, to set the output delimiter to _ you would use:

cut sales.txt -f 1,3 --output-delimiter='_'

Y-2019_100K
Y-2020_200K

Cut Examples#

Generally, cut command is used with the combination with other commands through piping. Below are the examples:

List of all users#

Run getent passwd command and pass output to cut, that will prints the 1st field using - as delimiter.

getent passwd | cut -d '-' -f1

The output shows a list of all system users.

Display 10 most frequently used commands#

In the following example, cut is used to strip the first 8 bytes from each line of the history command output.

history | cut -c8- | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn | head

Conclusion#

You learned how to use cut command to display selected fields from files or the standard input.