Robert P. J. Day wrote:
nitpicky, yes, but it occasionally irritates me that "cut" will
print fields, not in the order you specify them with the "-f" option,
but in the original order in the source text, to wit:
$ cut -d: -f1,7 /etc/passwd
root:/bin/bash
bin:/sbin/nologin
daemon:/sbin/nologin
...
$ cut -fd: -f7,1 /etc/passwd
root:/bin/bash
bin:/sbin/nologin
daemon:/sbin/nologin
...
is there really a reason that cut refuses to acknowledge the
order of the fields as supplied by the user? some historical
reason, perhaps, that we can now all make fun of and wonder what
they were smoking at the time?
I don't see any indication from the man page that would lead one to
believe that cut will print in the order listed. I think you are
simply implying a behavior that was never intended.
i understand that that's not indicated on the man page. on the other
hand, is there any reason that it *wasn't* done that way? it would
seem that that would be an obvious enhancement and, certainly, that
would be more intuitive behaviour, no?
You need some reason to type:
sed -e 's/\(.*\):\(.*\):\(.*\):\(.*\):\(.*\):\(.*\):\(.*\)/\7:\1/'
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell@xxxxxxxxx
