Re: cut -DF

[Assaf Gordon]

Hello Rob and all,


On 2022-01-05 9:23 a.m., Rob Landley wrote:
> Around 5 years ago toybox added the -D, -F, and -O options to cut:
>
>      -D  Don't sort/collate selections or match -fF lines without delimiter
>      -F  Select fields separated by DELIM regex
>      -O  Output delimiter (default one space for -F, input delim for -f)
[...]
> Elliott Hughes (the Android base OS maintainer) asked if I could get the feature
> more widely adopted:
>
> > your non-POSIX cut(1) extension covers 80% of the in-the-wild use of awk
> > anyway :-) 
[...]

> This is working and in use in Android, and now in busybox, and it would simplify
> my regression test suite if coreutils was in sync, so I thought I'd ask if you
> were interested.

I personally like the idea (at the very list "-D" will indeed replace
awk for many simple use-cases).

I'm working on a proof-of-concept (will share later today for feedback 
and comments).

Do you mind sharing your test suite?

-assaf