use of cut command

In this mode cut selects not characters but fields delimited by specifiec one character delimiter specified by option -d. The list of fields is specified with -f option ( -f [list] )

cut -d ":" -f1,7 /etc/passwd # cuts fields 1 and 7 from /etc/passwd

cut -d ":" -f 1,6- /etc/passwd # cuts fields 1, 6 to the end from /etc/passwd

The default delimiter is TAB. If space is used as a delimiter, be sure to put it in quotes (-d " ").

Note: Another way to specify blank (or other shell-sensitive character) is to use \ -- the following example prints the second field of every line in the file /etc/passwd

% cut -f2 -d\ /etc/passwd | more



refer:http://www.softpanorama.org/Tools/cut.shtml