Can a variable be used as a cut fieldname parameter?

Knotty · #1 (**permalink**) 03-31-2007

Hi,

Is it possible to use a variable as a fieldname parameter for the cut command. I am trying to extract fields from a variable. Say that I want to cut the fields 1,3,5,7,9, etc, but I don't know how many fields that the variable will have i.e. could be 100 or more. I thought that I could use a variable var and then use the command cut -f$var -d' ' in a loop structure and increment the variable but it seems that this is not possible.

Any suggestions?

anbu23 · #2 (**permalink**) 03-31-2007

Code:

echo $var | cut -d' ' -f1,3,5,7,9

Knotty · #3 (**permalink**) 03-31-2007

but what if I need more fields depending on the number of fields in the variable?

anbu23 · #4 (**permalink**) 03-31-2007

Code:

$ x="1,2,5,8"
$ echo "a|b|c|d|e|f|g|h|i|j|k|l" | cut -d"|" -f$x
a|b|e|h

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