"cut" field delimeter

I surely wish that the "cut" utility would make use of regular expressions
[regexp(5)] as field delimeters.  So many times I have to use "awk" where "cut"
would be simpler and quicker, but my fields are separated by more than one
character.  (Awk allows regexps in the -F switch.)  Something like:

    cut -d"[\t ,]+" -f1-3 myfile

would make "cut" infinitely more useful.  The example above would tell "cut"
that the fields are delimited by 1 or more consecutive spaces and/or tabs and/or
commas.

Mark

_______________________________________________
Bug-textutils mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-textutils