cut (extract columns) in Linux CLI - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Extract Specific Columns Using cut Command

📖 Scenario: You have a text file containing a list of employees with their details separated by commas. You want to extract only specific columns to see just the names and departments.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to use the cut command to extract specific columns from a comma-separated file.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a file named employees.txt with exact content

Use a variable to store the delimiter

Use the cut command with the delimiter variable to extract columns

Display the extracted columns output

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Extracting specific fields from CSV or text files is common in data processing and system administration.

💼 Career

Knowing how to use cut helps in log analysis, report generation, and quick data extraction tasks in many IT roles.

1

Create the employees.txt file

Create a file named employees.txt with the following exact content:
John,Doe,Accounting,50000
Jane,Smith,Marketing,60000
Emily,Jones,IT,55000

Linux CLI

# Create employees.txt file with exact content
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use echo -e with newline characters \n to create multiple lines in the file.

2

Set the delimiter variable

Create a variable called DELIM and set it to a comma , to use as the delimiter.

Linux CLI

echo -e "John,Doe,Accounting,50000\nJane,Smith,Marketing,60000\nEmily,Jones,IT,55000" > employees.txt
# Set DELIM variable to comma
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use DELIM=, to assign the comma character to the variable.

3

Extract first and third columns using cut

Use the cut command with the delimiter stored in DELIM to extract the first and third columns from employees.txt. Use -d "$DELIM" and -f 1,3 options.

Linux CLI

echo -e "John,Doe,Accounting,50000\nJane,Smith,Marketing,60000\nEmily,Jones,IT,55000" > employees.txt
DELIM=,
# Use cut command to extract columns 1 and 3
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use cut -d "$DELIM" -f 1,3 employees.txt to extract the first and third columns.

4

Display the extracted columns output

Run the script to display the output of the cut command showing only the first and third columns.

Linux CLI

echo -e "John,Doe,Accounting,50000\nJane,Smith,Marketing,60000\nEmily,Jones,IT,55000" > employees.txt
DELIM=,
cut -d "$DELIM" -f 1,3 employees.txt
# Display output below
# Your code here

Need a hint?

The output should show only the first and third columns separated by commas.