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Help with "cut" command in Unix

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# 1  
Old 09-23-2010
Help with "cut" command in Unix
Hi! Just a basic question:

I want to use the "cut" command to get some columns from a file, like this:

cat myfile | cut -f 5,3,2,1

The problem is that the output contains the columns I want, but in increasing order: 1,2,3,5, and not in the order I set before. I know I could also use awk, but for my shell script I do prefer to use "cut". Is there a way to solve this?

Thanks!!
# 2  
Old 09-23-2010
cut processes the file from left to right, it does not "go back", if you are on position 5, then you cannot go back to 1. use awk.
This User Gave Thanks to jim mcnamara For This Post:
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# 3  
Old 09-23-2010
bash code:
  1. while read -a L
  2. do
  3.    for i in 4 2 1 0 # indexes begin at 0
  4.    do      echo -n ${L[$i]}
  5.    done
  6.    echo
  7. done <myfile
or
bash code:
  1. while read -a L
  2. do   echo "${L[4]} ${L[2]} ${L[1]} ${L[0]}"
  3. done <myfile
This User Gave Thanks to frans For This Post:
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