Re: cut 2.0a

Hacksaw <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.comp.gnu.textutils.bugs
Message-ID <[email protected]>
>The cut program could be changed to do things differently.  But then
>it would not be cut, it would be sed, awk, perl, ruby, etc.  That

Reductio ad absurdum. I am suggesting that cut merely be taught to recognize 
random amounts of whitespace as a delimiter, which would make it a more useful 
utility without changing its other behaviors. That would no more make it an  
awk than adding a JATO unit to a car would make it a space shuttle.

>  wc -l ~/.alias | awk '{print$1}'

Sure, I'm aware of this, and a couple of solutions in perl. But this is a 
classic case of using a cutting torch to open a can of beans. Also, it adds 
quotes to the command line, which I like to avoid because they often 
complicate things.
-- 
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