2. cut

The command cut extracts a certain column (field) from the input, for example:
```
cut -f 3 distros.txt
```
```
cut -f 1,3 distros.txt
```
```
cut -f 1-2,3 distros.txt
```
If we want to extract only the year, we can do it like this:
```
cut -f 3 distros.txt | cut -c 7-10
```
The option -c tell cut to extract from the line characters, instead of fields (as if each character is a field).
```
cut -f 3 distros.txt | cut -c 7-10,1-2,4-5
```
Another way to get the year would be like this:
```
expand distros.txt | cut -c 23-
```
The command expand replaces tabs by the corresponding number of spaces, so that the year would always start at the position 23.
When working with fields, it is possible to specify a different field delimiter, instead of the tab. For example:
```
head /etc/passwd
```
```
cut -d ':' -f 1 /etc/passwd | head
```
Here we extract the first field from /etc/passwd.

Loading asciinema cast...