-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 29.8.2012 17:43, Rajagopal Swaminathan wrote: > On Wed, Aug 29, 2012 at 2:15 AM, Markus Falb > <markus.falb at fasel.at> wrote: >> On 28.8.2012 21:59, Rajagopal Swaminathan wrote: >> >> cut cuts out, that what it does. I think it works exactly as >> advertised. On my system the manpage says >> >> ...snip Selected input is written in the same order that it is >> read, and is written exactly once snap... >> > > See below > >>> Is it specific to linux? >> >> No! > > I would think, yes. On a OS-X, and thats non arguably not linux-ish (means gnu-ish) but bsd-ish $ echo 1,2,3,4,5 | cut -d, -f3,1,5 1,3,5 So it's definitely not specific to linux. > > From: > http://www.unix.com/unix-dummies-questions-answers/117504-question-cut-command.html > > [quote] ... In AIX (for example) if you said > > Code: echo 1,2,3,4,5 | cut -d, -f3,1,5 > > you would get output as 3,1,5 I tend to think that AIX is not posix compliant, then. http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/cut.html The behaviour of cut makes sense to me, actually. I remember one of the UNIX paradigms and thats "do only one thing but do it good" However, I realize that I do not suggest a better way to do what you want to do, but I do not think I have to, there were so many hints in this thread pointing you to awk and I remember actually one shell only example. - -- Kind Regards, Markus Falb -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG/MacGPG2 v2.0.17 (Darwin) Comment: GPGTools - http://gpgtools.org Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAlA+SLIACgkQYoWFBIJE9eUJTwCfY7LL6BaE5gFJbBIeHoRrRpus R0UAn3m7wjXIelJy36jYLbNexoue4NN4 =uVtC -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----