Manual: cut

CUT(1)						   General Commands Manual					      CUT(1)

NAME
       cut - Prints specified byte or field columns from each line of stdin or the input files

SYNOPSIS
       cut   [-b|--bytes]  [-c|--characters]  [-d|--delimiter]	[-w  ]	[-f|--fields]  [--complement]  [-s|--only-delimited]
       [-z|--zero-terminated] [--output-delimiter] [-n ] [-h|--help] [-V|--version] [file]

DESCRIPTION
       Prints specified byte or field columns from each line of stdin or the input files

OPTIONS
       -b, --bytes 
	      filter byte columns from the input source

       -c, --characters 
	      alias for character mode

       -d, --delimiter 
	      specify the delimiter character that separates fields in the input source. Defaults to Tab.

       -w     Use any number of whitespace (Space, Tab) to separate fields in the input source (FreeBSD extension).

       -f, --fields 
	      filter field columns from the input source

       --complement
	      invert the filter - instead of displaying only the filtered columns, display all but those columns

       -s, --only-delimited
	      in field mode, only print lines which contain the delimiter

       -z, --zero-terminated
	      instead of filtering columns based on line, filter columns based on \0 (NULL character)

       --output-delimiter 
	      in field mode, replace the delimiter in output lines with this option's argument

       -n     (ignored)

       -h, --help
	      Print help

       -V, --version
	      Print version

EXTRA
       Each call must specify a mode (what to use for columns), a sequence (which columns to  print),  and  provide  a	data
       source

       ### Specifying a mode

       Use --bytes (-b) or --characters (-c) to specify byte mode

       Use  --fields  (-f) to specify field mode, where each line is broken into fields identified by a delimiter character.
       For example for a typical CSV you could use this in combination with setting comma as the delimiter

       ### Specifying a sequence

       A sequence is a group of 1 or more numbers or inclusive ranges separated by a commas.

       cut -f 2,5-7 some_file.txt

       will display the 2nd, 5th, 6th, and 7th field for each source line

       Ranges can extend to the end of the row by excluding the second number

       cut -f 3- some_file.txt

       will display the 3rd field and all fields after for each source line

       The first number of a range can be excluded, and this is effectively the same as using 1	 as  the  first	 number:  it
       causes the range to begin at the first column. Ranges can also display a single column

       cut -f 1,3-5 some_file.txt

       will display the 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th field for each source line

       The --complement option, when used, inverts the effect of the sequence

       cut --complement -f 4-6 some_file.txt

       will display the every field but the 4th, 5th, and 6th

       ### Specifying a data source

       If no sourcefile arguments are specified, stdin is used as the source of lines to print

       If  sourcefile  arguments  are specified, stdin is ignored and all files are read in consecutively if a sourcefile is
       not successfully read, a warning will print to stderr, and the eventual status code will be 1, but cut will  continue
       to read through proceeding sourcefiles

       To print columns from both STDIN and a file argument, use - (dash) as a sourcefile argument to represent stdin.

       ### Field Mode options

       The fields in each line are identified by a delimiter (separator)

       #### Set the delimiter

       Set  the delimiter which separates fields in the file using the --delimiter (-d) option. Setting the delimiter is op‐
       tional.	If not set, a default delimiter of Tab will be used.

       If the -w option is provided, fields will be separated by any number of whitespace characters (Space  and  Tab).	 The
       output delimiter will be a Tab unless explicitly specified. Only one of -d or -w option can be specified.  This is an
       extension adopted from FreeBSD.

       #### Optionally Filter based on delimiter

       If the --only-delimited (-s) flag is provided, only lines which contain the delimiter will be printed

       #### Replace the delimiter

       If  the	--output-delimiter option is provided, the argument used for it will replace the delimiter character in each
       line printed. This is useful for transforming tabular data - e.g. to convert a CSV to a TSV (tab-separated file)

       ### Line endings

       When the --zero-terminated (-z) option is used, cut sees \0 (null) as the 'line ending' character (both for the	pur‐
       poses  of reading lines and separating printed lines) instead of \\n (newline). This is useful for tabular data where
       some of the cells may contain newlines

       echo 'ab\0cd' | cut -z -c 1

       will result in 'a\0c\0'

VERSION
       v(uutils coreutils) 0.8.0

							 2026-04-16						      CUT(1)