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. From: http://www.unix.com/unix-dummies-questions-answers/117504-question-cut-command.html [quote] 08-22-2009 Scott's Avatar Scott Scott is offline Forum Staff Administrator Join Date: Jun 2009 Location: Switzerland - ZH Posts: 5,632 Thanks: 136 Thanked 596 Times in 515 Posts 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 But the cut command in Linux behaves differently. >From the man page: Quote: Selected input is written in the same order that it is read, and is written exactly once. Which I think is poor. I can't see any way to do what you want with cut. [unquote] Thanks for everybody who pitched in Any the issue got transformed into something else altogether.... (PHB, vlookup 'experts' and the such for time being) -- Regards, Rajagopal