Original author(s) | AT&T Bell Laboratories |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Various open-source and commercial developers |
Initial release | February 1985 |
Operating system | Unix, Unix-like, IBM i |
Platform | Cross-platform |
Type | Command |
License | coreutils: GPLv3+ |
In computing, cut
is a command line utility on Unix and Unix-like operating systems which is used to extract sections from each line of input — usually from a file. It is currently part of the GNU coreutils package and the BSD Base System.
Extraction of line segments can typically be done by bytes (-b
), characters (-c
), or fields (-f
) separated by a delimiter (-d
— the tab character by default). A range must be provided in each case which consists of one of N
, N-M,
N-
(N
to the end of the line), or -M
(beginning of the line to M
), 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.