The cut utility selects, or “cuts,” characters or fields
from its standard input and sends them to its standard output.
Fields are separated by TABs by default,
but you may supply a command-line option to change the field
delimiter (i.e., the field-separator character). cut’s
definition of fields is less general than awk’s.
A common use of cut might be to pull out just the login names of
logged-on users from the output of who. For example, the following
pipeline generates a sorted, unique list of the logged-on users:
who | cut -c1-8 | sort | uniq
The options for cut are:
-c listUse list as the list of characters to cut out. Items within the list may be separated by commas, and ranges of characters can be separated with dashes. The list ‘1-8,15,22-35’ specifies characters 1 through 8, 15, and 22 through 35.
-d delimUse delim as the field-separator character instead of the TAB character.
-f listUse list as the list of fields to cut out.
-sSuppress printing of lines that do not contain the field delimiter.
The awk implementation of cut uses the getopt() library
function (see Processing Command-Line Options)
and the join() library function
(see Merging an Array into a String).
The current POSIX version of cut has options to cut fields based on
both bytes and characters. This version does not attempt to implement those options,
as awk works exclusively in terms of characters.
The program begins with a comment describing the options, the library
functions needed, and a usage() function that prints out a usage
message and exits. usage() is called if invalid arguments are
supplied:
# cut.awk --- implement cut in awk # Options: # -c list Cut characters # -f list Cut fields # -d c Field delimiter character # # -s Suppress lines without the delimiter # # Requires getopt() and join() library functions
function usage()
{
print("usage: cut [-f list] [-d c] [-s] [files...]") > "/dev/stderr"
print(" cut [-c list] [files...]") > "/dev/stderr"
exit 1
}
Next comes a BEGIN rule that parses the command-line options.
It sets FS to a single TAB character, because that is cut’s
default field separator. The rule then sets the output field separator to be the
same as the input field separator. A loop using getopt() steps
through the command-line options. Exactly one of the variables
by_fields or by_chars is set to true, to indicate that
processing should be done by fields or by characters, respectively.
When cutting by characters, the output field separator is set to the null
string:
BEGIN {
FS = "\t" # default
OFS = FS
while ((c = getopt(ARGC, ARGV, "sf:c:d:")) != -1) {
if (c == "f") {
by_fields = 1
fieldlist = Optarg
} else if (c == "c") {
by_chars = 1
fieldlist = Optarg
OFS = ""
} else if (c == "d") {
if (length(Optarg) > 1) {
printf("cut: using first character of %s" \
" for delimiter\n", Optarg) > "/dev/stderr"
Optarg = substr(Optarg, 1, 1)
}
fs = FS = Optarg
OFS = FS
if (FS == " ") # defeat awk semantics
FS = "[ ]"
} else if (c == "s")
suppress = 1
else
usage()
}
# Clear out options
for (i = 1; i < Optind; i++)
ARGV[i] = ""
The code must take
special care when the field delimiter is a space. Using
a single space (" ") for the value of FS is
incorrect—awk would separate fields with runs of spaces,
TABs, and/or newlines, and we want them to be separated with individual
spaces.
To this end, we save the original space character in the variable
fs for later use; after setting FS to "[ ]" we can’t
use it directly to see if the field delimiter character is in the string.
Also remember that after getopt() is through
(as described in Processing Command-Line Options),
we have to
clear out all the elements of ARGV from 1 to Optind,
so that awk does not try to process the command-line options
as file names.
After dealing with the command-line options, the program verifies that the
options make sense. Only one or the other of -c and -f
should be used, and both require a field list. Then the program calls
either set_fieldlist() or set_charlist() to pull apart the
list of fields or characters:
if (by_fields && by_chars)
usage()
if (by_fields == 0 && by_chars == 0)
by_fields = 1 # default
if (fieldlist == "") {
print "cut: needs list for -c or -f" > "/dev/stderr"
exit 1
}
if (by_fields)
set_fieldlist()
else
set_charlist()
}
set_fieldlist() splits the field list apart at the commas
into an array. Then, for each element of the array, it looks to
see if the element is actually a range, and if so, splits it apart.
The function checks the range
to make sure that the first number is smaller than the second.
Each number in the list is added to the flist array, which
simply lists the fields that will be printed. Normal field splitting
is used. The program lets awk handle the job of doing the
field splitting:
function set_fieldlist( n, m, i, j, k, f, g)
{
n = split(fieldlist, f, ",")
j = 1 # index in flist
for (i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
if (index(f[i], "-") != 0) { # a range
m = split(f[i], g, "-")
if (m != 2 || g[1] >= g[2]) {
printf("cut: bad field list: %s\n",
f[i]) > "/dev/stderr"
exit 1
}
for (k = g[1]; k <= g[2]; k++)
flist[j++] = k
} else
flist[j++] = f[i]
}
nfields = j - 1
}
The set_charlist() function is more complicated than
set_fieldlist().
The idea here is to use gawk’s FIELDWIDTHS variable
(see Reading Fixed-Width Data),
which describes constant-width input. When using a character list, that is
exactly what we have.
Setting up FIELDWIDTHS is more complicated than simply listing the
fields that need to be printed. We have to keep track of the fields to
print and also the intervening characters that have to be skipped.
For example, suppose you wanted characters 1 through 8, 15, and
22 through 35. You would use ‘-c 1-8,15,22-35’. The necessary value
for FIELDWIDTHS is "8 6 1 6 14". This yields five
fields, and the fields to print
are $1, $3, and $5.
The intermediate fields are filler,
which is stuff in between the desired data.
flist lists the fields to print, and t tracks the
complete field list, including filler fields:
function set_charlist( field, i, j, f, g, n, m, t,
filler, last, len)
{
field = 1 # count total fields
n = split(fieldlist, f, ",")
j = 1 # index in flist
for (i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
if (index(f[i], "-") != 0) { # range
m = split(f[i], g, "-")
if (m != 2 || g[1] >= g[2]) {
printf("cut: bad character list: %s\n",
f[i]) > "/dev/stderr"
exit 1
}
len = g[2] - g[1] + 1
if (g[1] > 1) # compute length of filler
filler = g[1] - last - 1
else
filler = 0
if (filler)
t[field++] = filler
t[field++] = len # length of field
last = g[2]
flist[j++] = field - 1
} else {
if (f[i] > 1)
filler = f[i] - last - 1
else
filler = 0
if (filler)
t[field++] = filler
t[field++] = 1
last = f[i]
flist[j++] = field - 1
}
}
FIELDWIDTHS = join(t, 1, field - 1)
nfields = j - 1
}
Next is the rule that processes the data. If the -s option
is given, then suppress is true. The first if statement
makes sure that the input record does have the field separator. If
cut is processing fields, suppress is true, and the field
separator character is not in the record, then the record is skipped.
If the record is valid, then gawk has split the data
into fields, either using the character in FS or using fixed-length
fields and FIELDWIDTHS. The loop goes through the list of fields
that should be printed. The corresponding field is printed if it contains data.
If the next field also has data, then the separator character is
written out between the fields:
{
if (by_fields && suppress && index($0, fs) == 0)
next
for (i = 1; i <= nfields; i++) {
if ($flist[i] != "") {
printf "%s", $flist[i]
if (i < nfields && $flist[i+1] != "")
printf "%s", OFS
}
}
print ""
}
This version of cut relies on gawk’s FIELDWIDTHS
variable to do the character-based cutting. It is possible in
other awk implementations to use substr()
(see String-Manipulation Functions), but
it is also extremely painful.
The FIELDWIDTHS variable supplies an elegant solution to the problem
of picking the input line apart by characters.