How can I select columns from a file?
head
and tail
let you select rows from a text file.
If you want to select columns,
you can use the command cut
.
It has several options (use man cut
to explore them),
but the most common is something like:
cut -f 2-5,8 -d , values.csv
which means
"select columns 2 through 5 and columns 8,
using comma as the separator".
cut
uses -f
(meaning "fields") to specify columns
and -d
(meaning "delimiter") to specify the separator.
You need to specify the latter because some files may use spaces, tabs, or colons to separate columns.
What command will select the first column (containing dates) from the file spring.csv
?
This exercise is part of the course
Introduction to Shell
Hands-on interactive exercise
Turn theory into action with one of our interactive exercises
