10 Daily Linux Questions and Answers Series (part 9)

In this brief article, I present 10 essential Linux questions along with their answers.
This foundational knowledge is crucial for anyone seeking to master Linux.

Cut Command
Q1: What is the cut command used for in Linux?
cut is used to extract sections from each line of input files or data.

Q2: How do you use cut to extract the first column from a file separated?

cut -d 'delimiter' -f 1 filename

Q3: How do you extract only the usernames from the /etc/passwd file?

cut -d ':' -f 1 /etc/passwd

Q4: How can you extract a specific range of characters, say characters 5 to 10, from each line of a file?

cut -c 5-10 filename

Q5: How do you extract multiple columns, say the 2nd and 4th fields, from a CSV file?

cut -d ',' -f 2,4 filename.csv

Q6: How do you use cut to extract a range of fields, for example, fields 2 to 5?

cut -d ' ' -f 2-5 filename

Q7: What will happen if you use cut without specifying a delimiter when extracting fields?
It will use the default delimiter, which is a tab.


Q8: How can you use cut with ls -l to display only file sizes?

ls -l | cut -d ' ' -f 5

Q9: How do you extract the last field using cut?

cut -d ' ' -f $(awk '{print NF}' filename) filename

Q10: How can you extract fields from a log file where fields are separated by multiple spaces?

cut -d ' ' -f 1-5 filename 

Stay tuned for part 10 coming tomorrow!

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