[kseistrup]

The biggest handicap of cut for me has always been that it cannot split on blanks (TABs or SPACEs), you have to choose between TAB or SPACE. So I wrote an awk script that can print field ranges like cut, but recognizes blanks. Now I will see if I can get tuc worked into my muscle memory.

[layer8]

I usually just pipe through sed to normalize the separators before applying cut.

[kseistrup]

That's also a little awkward, when there could easily be an option to split by all blanks.

[layer8]

I’m not defending cut here, but using sed is also pretty straightforward and fits its purpose. I’d argue that using the existing general-purpose tools is better than creating custom narrow-purpose tools in simple cases like this one. Besides maintainability and familiarity, it also exercises your proficiency in applying the standard tools.

[kseistrup]

You have a point, of course.