Unix Text Manipulation Examples

In the following examples we will be using the following data file named data.

d e f 
1 2 3
x y z
a b c
7 8 9
4 5 6

To cat a file to the screen do the following:

% cat data
d e f 
1 2 3
x y z
a b c
7 8 9
4 5 6

To cut the second column of letters and numbers out the of the data file you could othe following:

% cat data | cut -c3
e
2
y
b
8
5

Another way to do the same thing using awk would be:

% cat data | awk '{print $2}' 
e
2
y
b
8
5

Notice that the cut command took the third character postion from the file and the awk commad took the second field from the file. NOTE: awk assumes the field separtor is a SPACE/TAB but you can use the -f option to change the field separator. To sort the file you could do the following:

% cat data | sort
1 2 3
4 5 6
7 8 9
a b c
d e f 
x y z

To file all lines in a file with an "y" in it you could do the following:

% grep y data 
x y z

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