cut is ashellcommand that extracts sections from each line of input text — usually from afile. Extraction of line segments can typically be done bybytes (-b),characters (-c), or fields (-f) separated by a delimiter (-d — thetab character by default). A range must be provided in each case which consists of one ofN,N-M,N- (N to the end of the line), or-M (beginning of the line toM), where N and M are counted from 1 (there is no zeroth value). Since version 6, an error is thrown if you include a zeroth value. Prior to this the value was ignored and assumed to be 1.

The originalBell Labs version was written by Gottfried W. R. Luderer.^[1][2] The command is part of theX/Open Portability Guide since issue 2 of 1987. It was inherited into the first version of POSIX.1 and theSingle Unix Specification.^[3] It first appeared inAT&T System III UNIX in 1982.^[4]

The command is commonly available onUnix andUnix-likeoperating systems. It is part of theBSD Base System. The version inGNUcoreutils was written by David M. Ihnat, David MacKenzie, and Jim Meyering.^[5] The command is available forWindows viaUnxUtils.^[6] The command was ported to theIBM i operating system.^[7]

Thecommand line consists of options and an optional file path. If no path is specified thanstandard input will be used.

Options include:

-b

Bytes; a list following-b specifies a range ofbytes which will be returned, e.g.cut -b1-66 would return the first 66 bytes of a line. NB If used in conjunction with-n, no multi-byte characters will be split. NNB.-b will only work on input lines of less than 1023 bytes

-c

Characters; a list following-c specifies a range of characters which will be returned, e.g.cut -c1-66 would return the first 66 characters of a line

-f

Specifies a field list, separated by adelimiter

list

A comma separated or blank separated list of integer denoted fields, incrementally ordered. The- indicator may be supplied as shorthand to allow inclusion of ranges of fields e.g.4-6 for ranges 4–6 or5- as shorthand for field 5 to the end, etc.

-n

Used in combination with -b suppresses splits ofmulti-byte characters

-d

Delimiter; the character immediately following the-d option is the field delimiter for use in conjunction with the-f option; the default delimiter istab. Space and other characters with special meanings within the context of theshell in use must be enquoted or escaped as necessary.

-s

Bypasses lines which contain no field delimiters when-f is specified, unless otherwise indicated.

Given a file namedfoo with content:

foo:bar:baz:qux:quuxone:two:three:four:five:six:sevenalpha:beta:gamma:delta:epsilon:zeta:eta:theta:iota:kappa:lambda:muthe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

To output the fourth through tenth characters of each line:

$cut-c4-10foo:bar:ba:two:thha:beta quick

To output the fifth field through the end of the line of each line using thecolon character as the field delimiter:

$cut-d":"-f5-fooquuxfive:six:sevenepsilon:zeta:eta:theta:iota:kappa:lambda:muthe quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog

Because the colon is not found in the last line, the entire line is shown.

Option-d specifies a single character delimiter (in the example above it is a colon) which serves as field separator. Option-f which specifies range of fields included in the output (here fields range from five till the end). Option-d presupposes usage of option-f.

To output the third field of each line using space as the field delimiter:

$cut-d" "-f3foofoo:bar:baz:qux:quuxone:two:three:four:five:six:sevenalpha:beta:gamma:delta:epsilon:zeta:eta:theta:iota:kappa:lambda:mubrown

Because the space character is not found in the first three lines these entire lines are shown.

To separate two words having any delimiter:

$line=process.processid$cut-d"."-f1<<<$lineprocess$cut-d"."-f2<<<$lineprocessid

• awk – Text processing programming languagePages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• grep – Command-line utility for text search
• List of POSIX commands
• paste (Unix) – Shell command for joining files horizontally
• sed – Utility for transforming text

The WikibookGuide to Unix has a page on the topic of:Commands

• cut – Shell and Utilities Reference,The Single UNIX Specification, Version 5 fromThe Open Group
• Softpanorama cut page.
• Cut out selected fields of each line of a file A portrait of cut(1) and its historical background.

• Unix text processing utilities
• Standard Unix programs
• Unix SUS2008 utilities
• IBM i Qshell commands

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