How can I get 2nd and third column in tab delim file in bash?

Question

I want to use bash to process a tab delimited file. I only need the second column and third to a new file.

score 86 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 10 '11 at 22:13

86

cut(1) was made expressly for this purpose:

cut -f 2-3 input.txt > output.txt

answered Jun 10 '11 at 22:13

Carl Norum

Fredrik Pihl · Answer 2 · 2011-06-10T22:25:19.090

15

Cut is probably the best choice here, second to that is awk

awk -F"\t" '{print $2 "\t" $3}' input > out

edited Jun 10 '11 at 22:25

answered Jun 10 '11 at 22:17

Fredrik Pihl

3

the file had 2 million rows so i guess cut was good...thank you for your help – RnD Jun 10 '11 at 22:36
1

`awk` comes in particularly handy when you want to change the order of columns. `cut` can't do that! – ostrokach Dec 21 '15 at 23:26

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 07 '18 at 09:28

3

expanding on the answer of carl-norum, using only tab as a delimiter, not all blanks:

cut -d$'\t' -f 2-3 input.txt > output.txt

don't put a space between d and $

answered Jun 07 '18 at 09:28

vkersten

3 Answers3