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Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Cutting the first 8 chars of a 2nd column Post 302178965 by curleb on Wednesday 26th of March 2008 05:05:38 PM
Old 03-26-2008
The stream has a tough time distinguishing whitespace from tab chars, so you might want to swap them into visible chars going in, and return them to normal coming out:

Code:
cat my_file |sed 's/\t/\|/g' |while read line
do
col1=$(echo $line |cut -d"|" -f1 )
col2=$(echo $line |cut -d"|" -f2 |cut -b 1-8 )
print "$col1|$col2"
done |sed 's/|/\t/g'

This seds the tab chars into an alternate delimiter and then cuts the fields according to your needs. The entire thing is then reversed on its way out, so that it can be redirected to a second file, etc.

HTH
 

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cut(1)								   User Commands							    cut(1)

NAME
cut - cut out selected fields of each line of a file SYNOPSIS
cut -b list [-n] [file...] cut -c list [file...] cut -f list [-d delim] [-s] [file...] DESCRIPTION
Use the cut utility to cut out columns from a table or fields from each line of a file; in data base parlance, it implements the projection of a relation. The fields as specified by list can be fixed length, that is, character positions as on a punched card (-c option) or the length can vary from line to line and be marked with a field delimiter character like <TAB> (-f option). cut can be used as a filter. Either the -b, -c, or -f option must be specified. Use grep(1) to make horizontal ``cuts'' (by context) through a file, or paste(1) to put files together column-wise (that is, horizontally). To reorder columns in a table, use cut and paste. OPTIONS
The following options are supported: list A comma-separated or blank-character-separated list of integer field numbers (in increasing order), with optional - to indicate ranges (for instance, 1,4,7; 1-3,8; -5,10 (short for 1-5,10); or 3- (short for third through last field)). -b list The list following -b specifies byte positions (for instance, -b1-72 would pass the first 72 bytes of each line). When -b and -n are used together, list is adjusted so that no multi-byte character is split. -c list The list following -c specifies character positions (for instance, -c1-72 would pass the first 72 characters of each line). -d delim The character following -d is the field delimiter (-f option only). Default is tab. Space or other characters with special meaning to the shell must be quoted. delim can be a multi-byte character. -f list The list following -f is a list of fields assumed to be separated in the file by a delimiter character (see -d ); for instance, -f1,7 copies the first and seventh field only. Lines with no field delimiters will be passed through intact (use- ful for table subheadings), unless -s is specified. -n Do not split characters. When -b list and -n are used together, list is adjusted so that no multi-byte character is split. -s Suppresses lines with no delimiter characters in case of -f option. Unless specified, lines with no delimiters will be passed through untouched. OPERANDS
The following operands are supported: file A path name of an input file. If no file operands are specified, or if a file operand is -, the standard input will be used. USAGE
See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of cut when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte (2**31 bytes). EXAMPLES
Example 1: Mapping user IDs A mapping of user IDs to names follows: example% cut -d: -f1,5 /etc/passwd Example 2: Setting current login name To set name to current login name: example$ name=`who am i | cut -f1 -d' '` ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of cut: LANG, LC_ALL, LC_CTYPE, LC_MES- SAGES, and NLSPATH. EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned: 0 All input files were output successfully. >0 An error occurred. ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWcsu | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |CSI |Enabled | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Interface Stability |Standard | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
grep(1), paste(1), attributes(5), environ(5), largefile(5), standards(5) DIAGNOSTICS
cut: -n may only be used with -b cut: -d may only be used with -f cut: -s may only be used with -f cut: cannot open <file> Either file cannot be read or does not exist. If multiple files are present, processing continues. cut: no delimiter specified Missing delim on -d option. cut: invalid delimiter cut: no list specified Missing list on -b, -c, or -f option. cut: invalid range specifier cut: too many ranges specified cut: range must be increasing cut: invalid character in range cut: internal error processing input cut: invalid multibyte character cut: unable to allocate enough memory SunOS 5.10 29 Apr 1999 cut(1)
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