| CUT(1) | General Commands Manual | CUT(1) |
NAME
cut - Extract sections from each line of files.
SYNOPSIS
cut OPTION... [FILE]...
DESCRIPTION
Extract sections from each line of files.
OPTIONS
- -b, --bytes <LIST>
- extract bytes listed in LIST
- -c, --characters <LIST>
- extract characters listed in LIST
- -d, --delimiter <DELIM>
- use DELIM as field separator (default: Tab)
- -w, --whitespace-delimited[=<trimmed>]
- use any whitespace (Space/Tab) as delimiter; ignore leading and trailing
blanks with 'trimmed'
Possible values:
- •
- trimmed
- -f, --fields <LIST>
- extract fields listed in LIST
- -F <LIST>
- like -f, but merge adjacent delimiters; the delimiter defaults to whitespace and the output delimiter to a space
- --complement
- invert selection: print all columns except the specified ones
- -s, --only-delimited
- suppress lines that do not contain the delimiter
- -z, --zero-terminated
- use NULL (\0) instead of newline as line terminator
- -O, --output-delimiter <NEW_DELIM>
- replace input delimiter with NEW_DELIM in output
- -n, --no-partial
- with -b, do not output partial multi-byte characters
- -h, --help
- Print help
- -V, --version
- Print version
EXTRA
If no FILE is specified, reads from stdin. Use '-' as a FILE argument to include stdin.
LIST is a comma-separated list of numbers or ranges:
N only column N
N- columns N through the end of the line
N-M columns N through M
-M columns 1 through M
Examples:
cut -f 2,5-7 file.txt extract fields 2, 5, 6, and 7
cut -f 3- file.txt extract field 3 to the end of the line
cut --complement -f 4-6 file.txt extract all fields except 4, 5, and 6
cut -d',' -f1 file.csv extract first field from a CSV
VERSION
v(uutils coreutils) 0.11.0
| 2026-09-01 |