CUT(1)

📦
version 9.12 · 27 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 CUT(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to cut — the manual page, but make it a group chat 🫶 it lives in the User Commands section of the manual, and it's about to become your main character tool for slicing up text. no cap.

✨ NAME ✨

cut — remove sections from each line of files 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

cut OPTION... [FILE]...

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so basically? it prints the selected parts of lines from each FILE to standard output. that's the whole vibe. 🎀

and if you give it no FILE at all — or if FILE is literally just - — it reads from standard input instead. periodt.

ngl, a lil heads up: mandatory arguments to long options are also mandatory for short options too. the rules apply both ways, fr fr.

🌸 OPTIONS 🌸

  • -b, --bytes=LIST — only pick these byte positions 💖
  • -c, --characters=LIST — only pick these character positions ✨
  • --complement — flip it, reverse it: take the complement of the set of selected bytes, characters, or fields 🦋
  • -d, --delimiter=DELIM — use DELIM as the field delimiter instead of TAB 💅
  • -f, --fields=LIST — only pick these fields; it'll also print any line that contains no delimiter character, unless you specified the -s option 👀
  • -F LIST — same energy as -f, but it also implies -w and -O ' ' 🔥
  • -n, --no-partial — with -b, do not output partial multi-byte characters. we do not do half-characters here, it's giving incomplete 😭
  • -O, --output-delimiter=STRING — use STRING as the output delimiter; the default is to just reuse the input delimiter 🌈
  • -s, --only-delimited — do not print lines that don't contain delimiters 🚫
  • -w, --whitespace-delimited[=trimmed] — use a run of blank characters as the field delimiter; with 'trimmed', ignore leading and trailing blanks 🧚
  • -z, --zero-terminated — line delimiter is NUL, not newline. iconic little \0 moment 💀
  • --help — display this help and exit 🫶
  • --version — output version information and exit ⭐

🎀 THE LIST RULES 🎀

Use one, and only one of -b, -c, -f or -F. choose your fighter, bestie, you can't have all four 😤

each LIST is made up of one range, or many ranges separated by commas.

selected input gets written in the same order that it is read, and it's written exactly once. no duplicates, no reshuffling. obsessed. 💜

each range is one of these:

  • N — the N'th byte, character or field, counted from 1
  • N- — from the N'th byte, character or field, all the way to the end of line
  • N-M — from the N'th to the M'th (included) byte, character or field
  • -M — from the first to the M'th (included) byte, character or field

✨ AUTHOR ✨

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

🦋 REPORTING BUGS 🦋

Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. like, zero. none. don't come for them 😭

💜 SEE ALSO 💜

okay that's the whole thing!! this page is from GNU coreutils 9.12, dated September 2026, and it's page CUT(1) in the manual 💖 go forth and slice, bestie — you got this fr fr 🌸✨🫶

📦 where this page comes from