Re: wishlist: give cut(1) option to split fields on whitespace

[Pádraig Brady]

Mike Coleman wrote:
> It would be really nice if cut(1) could split fields using whitespace
> as a separator (as many other text tools do).  Currently I use
> 
>     $ awk '{ print $3, $4, $5 }'
> 
> for this sort of thing, but it seems relatively klutzy, as opposed to (say)
> 
>     $ cut -w -f 3-5

That was discussed a while ago:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2009-05/msg00153.html

In summary the existing `tr -s '[:blank:]' | cut -d ' '`
was (marginally) deemed sufficient rather than supporting
cut -d '[:blank:]'

cheers,
Pádraig.