How to extract specific characters?

To extract specific, non-consecutive characters from a file using the cut command, you can specify the character positions separated by commas with the -c option.

Syntax

cut -c <character-list> <filename>

Example

If you want to extract the 1st, 5th, and 9th characters from a file named data.txt, you would use:

cut -c 1,5,9 data.txt

This command will output the specified characters from each line in data.txt.

Example Output

For a file containing the following lines:

Hello World
Python Rocks
Cut Command

The command cut -c 1,5,9 data.txt would produce:

H W
P R
C C

This shows the 1st, 5th, and 9th characters from each line.