Re: cut -DF

[Rob Landley]

On 1/15/22 6:20 AM, Shehu Dikko wrote:
> * Pádraig Brady [2022-01-15] [gmane.comp.gnu.coreutils.general]:
>> On 15/01/2022 08:44, Shehu Dikko wrote:
>>> [....]
>>> $ echo one two three four five six seven eight nine | cut -DF 1,5-$
>>> one five six seven eight nine
>>>
>>> Do please also add the undocumented feature to cut.
>>> [..]
>>
>> Open ended ranges are already supported by coreutils cut:
>>
>>    $ echo one two three four five six seven eight nine | cut -d ' ' -f 1,5-
>>    one five six seven eight nine
>>
>> I don't think we need to support an explicit '$' for this.
> 
> Noted. I didn't want to see it overlooked in the context of the -DF.

Unterminated ranges are already supported by toybox and busybox cut. It's a
posix requirement:

https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/cut.html

The -D option is "Don't reorder" and -F is "regex match" defaulting to a run of
one or more whitespace characters. (And since emitting a regex as the default
output delimiter is silly, -F makes the default --output-delimiter be a single
space. -O is just a short opt for the existing --output-delimiter.)

The rest of the behavior is what cut was already doing.

Rob