Re: I would like to add a feature to the cut command, I think

[Joe Maimon]

Jeff Silverman wrote:

> I am trying to parse whitespace delimited files, and it seems 
> intuitively obvious to me that I ought to be able to do it with the 
> cut command.  Cut works fine with /etc/mtab, where the fields really 
> and truly are delimited by a single space character.  But for files 
> such as /etc/fstab, where the fields are delimited by any amount of 
> white space, cut doesn't work so well.
>
> Of course, I can do this with a one liner in perl, but that's not the 
> point.
>
> I'd like to modify the cut command to accept the -W switch, which says 
> that the fields are white space delimited.  That should be a simple 
> change, technically.  But it isn't clear to me how I go about getting 
> the source code, testing my change under all operating systems and 
> getting it accepted into the distributions.  Can you advise me?
>
>
> Many thanks,
>
>
> Jeff
See this thread:

http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2004-03/msg00020.html