bug#7007: cannot pipe or redirect output from cut

[Eric Blake]

[please keep the list and bug-tracker in the loop]

On 09/10/2010 06:07 AM, David Longstaff wrote:
> I have since determined that the problem is using the double quote character
> (") as the delimiter:
>
> This works:-
>
> ****************************************************************************
> *******
>
> C:\Users\drl.drlpc>cat "Table of Contents.txt"|findstr "name=\"Name\""|cut
> -d = -f 3>>  strippedcontents.txt

Aha!  Your problem is that you are using cmd as your shell, which has 
completely different quoting rules than Unix-y shells.  It would have 
been helpful if you had told us you were using a Windows port in the 
first place.

> ****************************************************************************
> ********
>
> This doesn't:-
>
> ****************************************************************************
> ********
>
> C:\Users\drl.drlpc>cat "Table of Contents.txt"|findstr "name=\"Name\""|cut
> -d " -f 3>>  strippedcontents.txt
> cut: the delimiter must be a single character
> Try `cut --help' for more information.

Makes sense - the " is a quoting character in cmd, which meant the 
entire rest of your command line was passed as a single argument to cut; 
but cut correctly told you that a multi-character argument is 
inappropriate for -d.  It doesn't help that cmd apparently tries to be 
helpful by letting you use quoted strings without at terminating ".


> ****************************************************************************
> ********
>
> Nor does this:-
>
> ****************************************************************************
> ********
>
> C:\Users\drl.drlpc>cat "Table of Contents.txt"|findstr "name=\"Name\""|cut
> -d '"' -f 3>>  strippedcontents.txt
> cut: the delimiter must be a single character
> Try `cut --help' for more information.

cmd doesn't use '' for quoting, just " and \.

> ****************************************************************************
> ********
>
> Nor this:-
>
> ****************************************************************************
> ********
>
> C:\Users\drl.drlpc>cat "Table of Contents.txt"|findstr "name=\"Name\""|cut
> -d \" -f 3>>  strippedcontents.txt
> cut:>>: Invalid argument

cmd apparently also fails to treat >> as an append operator, and instead 
treats it as an argument.


It seems to me that your real problem is that you are using the wrong 
shell for your expectations.  Have you considered using cygwin (see 
cygwin.com), which comes with bash or tcsh pre-built for Windows, and 
where you can blindly use Unix shell conventions without having to worry 
about the brain-dead semantics of cmd?

--
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-801-349-2682
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org