CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashunix
lambda
lambda

Reputation: 1235

Cut command not extracting fields properly by default delimiter

I have a text file in which I must cut the fields 3,4,5 and 8:

219 432 4567 Harrison     Joel     M 4540 Accountant      09-12-1985
219 433 4587 Mitchell     Barbara  C 4541 Admin Asst      12-14-1995
219 433 3589 Olson        Timothy  H 4544 Supervisor      06-30-1983
219 433 4591 Moore        Sarah    H 4500 Dept Manager    08-01-1978
219 431 4527 Polk         John     S 4520 Accountant      09-22-1998
219 432 4567 Harrison     Joel     M 4540 Accountant      09-12-1985
219 432 1557 Harrison     James    M 4544 Supervisor      01-07-2000

Since the delimiter by default is tab the command to extract the fields would be:

cut -f 3,4,5,8 filename

The thing is that the output is the same as the original file content. What is happening here? Why doesn't this work?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 5698

Answers (1)

Michael Hampton
Michael Hampton

Reputation: 9980

Your file doesn't actually contain any tab characters.

By default, cut prints any lines which don't contain the delimiter, unless you specify the -s option.

Since your records are aligned on character boundaries rather than tab-separated, you should use the -c option to specify which columns to cut. For example:

cut -c 9-12,14-25,43-57 file

Upvotes: 3

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