$ info cut ‘-f FIELD-LIST’ ‘--fields=FIELD-LIST’ Select for printing only the fields listed in FIELD-LIST. Fields are separated by a TAB character by default. Also print any line that contains no delimiter character, unless the ‘--only-delimited’ (‘-s’) option is specified.
Note ‘awk’ supports more sophisticated field processing, and by default will use (and discard) runs of blank characters to separate fields, and ignore leading and trailing blanks. awk '{print $2}' # print the second field awk '{print $NF-1}' # print the penultimate field awk '{print $2,$1}' # reorder the first two fields Mention here: whereas cut -f 2,1 will just give you the same output as cut -f 1,2 Thanks. In the unlikely event that ‘awk’ is unavailable, one can use the ‘join’ command, to process blank characters as ‘awk’ does above. join -a1 -o 1.2 - /dev/null # print the second field join -a1 -o 1.2,1.1 - /dev/null # reorder the first two fields