This the multi-page printable view of this section.Click here to print.

Return to the regular view of this page.

Cut

Remove sections from each line of files

Table of Contents

SYNOPSIS

cut OPTION... [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION

Print selected parts of lines from each FILE to standard output.

With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.

-b, --bytes=LIST
select only these bytes
-c, --characters=LIST
select only these characters
-d, --delimiter=DELIM
use DELIM instead of TAB for field delimiter
-f, --fields=LIST
select only these fields; also print any line that contains no delimiter character, unless the -s option is specified
-n
ignored
--complement
complement the set of selected bytes, characters or fields
-s, --only-delimited
do not print lines not containing delimiters
--output-delimiter=STRING
use STRING as the output delimiter the default is to use the input delimiter
-z, --zero-terminated
line delimiter is NUL, not newline
--help
display this help and exit
--version
output version information and exit

Use one, and only one of -b, -c or -f. Each LIST is made up of one range, or many ranges separated by commas. Selected input is written in the same order that it is read, and is written exactly once. Each range is one of:

N
N'th byte, character or field, counted from 1
N-
from N'th byte, character or field, to end of line
N-M
from N'th to M'th (included) byte, character or field
-M
from first to M'th (included) byte, character or field

1 - Cut last column

How to get the last column using cut

To get the last field in a line using cut is simple, just wrap cut with a pair of rev commands and then extract the first field:

1rev | cut -f1 -d' ' | rev

This works as rev simply reverses the characters of each line, pipe it through cut which extracts the required fields (counting in reverse), and then reverses it again so the content is in the original order.

The only thing you have to remember is that, once reversed, field 1 is actually the last, 2 the one before the last and so on.