3.3.2. Filtering Vertically

See also

• Video about Filtering Data Vertically with Cut and Awk

3.3.2.1. cut

cut

Print selected parts of lines from each FILE to standard output. cut can also read data from stdin (usually via a pipe).

SYNOPSIS

cut [OPTION]… [FILE]…

-d, --delimiter=DELIM

Use DELIM instead of TAB for field delimiter

-f, --fields=LIST

Select only these fields; also print any line that contains no delimiter character, unless the -s option is specified

3.3.2.2. awk

Alternatives

If awk is to be considered for filtering data, also consider Perl and Python, which are general purpose scripting languages with excellent string processing capabilities.

See Vertical Filtering With Awk

3.3.2.3. paste

paste

Write lines consisting of the sequentially corresponding lines from each FILE, separated by TABs, to standard output. With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

The paste command is sort of the opposite of cut. The cut command filters vertical data (columns) from the data and paste takes columns of data from separate files and put them together.

SYNOPSIS

paste [OPTION]… [FILE]…

-d, --delimiters=LIST

reuse characters from LIST instead of TABs

-s, --serial

paste one file at a time instead of in parallel

Files contain the desired columns and paste merges the columns.

$ getent passwd | tail -5 | cut -d: -f3 > field3

$ getent passwd | tail -5 | cut -d: -f7 > field7

$ paste -d: field3 field7
558:/bin/bash
559:/bin/bash
560:/bin/bash
561:/bin/bash
562:/bin/bash