NAME
cut - remove sections from each line of files
SYNOPSIS
cut OPTION... [FILE]...
DESCRIPTION
Print selected parts of lines from each FILE to standard output.
With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.
Mandatory arguments to long options are mandatory for short options too.
- -b, --bytes=LIST
-
select only these byte positions
- -c, --characters=LIST
-
select only these character positions
- --complement
-
complement the set of selected bytes, characters or fields
- -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
- -F LIST
-
like -f, but also implies -w and -O ' '
- -n, --no-partial
-
with -b, don't output partial multi-byte characters
- -O, --output-delimiter=STRING
-
use STRING as the output delimiter; the default is to use the input delimiter
- -s, --only-delimited
-
do not print lines not containing 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
- --help
-
display this help and exit
- --version
-
output version information and exit
Use one, and only one of -b, -c, -f or -F. Each LIST is made up of one range, or many ranges separated by commas. Selected input is written in the same order that it is read, and is written exactly once. Each range is one of:
- N
-
N'th byte, character or field, counted from 1
- N-
-
from N'th byte, character or field, to end of line
- N-M
-
from N'th to M'th (included) byte, character or field
- -M
-
from first to M'th (included) byte, character or field
AUTHOR
Written by David M. Ihnat, David MacKenzie, and Jim Meyering.
REPORTING BUGS
Report bugs to: <[email protected]>.
Report any translation bugs to: <https://translationproject.org/team/>.
GNU coreutils home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>
COPYRIGHT
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.
SEE ALSO
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/cut>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) cut invocation'