Linux command: cut

cut - remove sections from each line of files

$ which cut
/usr/bin/cut

$ cut --version
cut (GNU coreutils) 8.30
Copyright (C) 2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later .
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by David M. Ihnat, David MacKenzie, and Jim Meyering.

Examples of cut

List all VMs in Qubes OS, then use cut to get the first column

$ qvm-ls | cut -d " " f 1 # Number 1 NOT letter L
$ qvm-ls | cut -d" " f1  # or NO space in between options and value

Extract username and id from /etc/passwd file

Delimiter is ":", username is in column 1 and id is in column 3.

$ cut -d: -f1,3 /etc/passwd

'cut' selects columns, 'head' and 'tail' select rows