Using cut command to remove multiple columns

Question

given input    echo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9    100    If I want to cut columns 5  I can do   cut -d  -f-4 6-   what if I want to cut multiple non consecutive columns like 5  7 etc is there a one liner

User · Accepted Answer

You should be able to continue the sequences directly in your existing -f specification.

To skip both 5 and 7, try:

cut -d, -f-4,6-6,8-

As you're skipping a single sequential column, this can also be written as:

cut -d, -f-4,6,8-

To keep it going, if you wanted to skip 5, 7, and 11, you would use:

cut -d, -f-4,6-6,8-10,12-

To put it into a more-clear perspective, it is easier to visualize when you use starting/ending columns which go on the beginning/end of the sequence list, respectively. For instance, the following will print columns 2 through 20, skipping columns 5 and 11:

cut -d, -f2-4,6-10,12-20

So, this will print "2 through 4", skip 5, "6 through 10", skip 11, and then "12 through 20".

User · Answer

Sometimes it s easier to think in terms of which fields to exclude   If the number of fields not being cut  not being retained in the output  is small  it may be easier to use the --complement flag  e g  to include all fields 1-20 except not 3  7  and 12 -- do this   cut -d  --complement -f3 7 12  lt inputfile   Rather than  cut -d  -f-2 4-6 8-11 13-

User · Answer

You are able to cut all odd even columns by using seq   This would print all odd columns  echo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10   cut -d  -f  seq -s  1 2 10    To print all even columns you could use  echo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10   cut -d  -f  seq -s  2 2 10    By changing the second number of seq you can specify which columns to be printed   If the specification which columns to print is more complex you could also use a  one-liner-if-clause  like  echo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10   cut -d  -f  for i in   seq 1 10   do if     i -lt 10  amp  amp   i -lt 5    then echo -n  i   else echo -n  i fi done    This would print all columns from 1 to 5 - you can simply modify the conditions to create more complex conditions to specify weather a column shall be printed

User · Answer

The same could be done with Perl Because it uses 0-based-indexing instead of 1-based-indexing  the field values are offset by 1  perl -F  -lane  print join       F 1  3 5  9 11  19         is equivalent to   cut -d  -f2-4 6-10 12-20   If the commas are not needed in the output   perl -F  -lane  print   F 1  3 5  9 11  19

[bash] Using cut command to remove multiple columns

Examples related to bash

Examples related to cut