How to extract *and reorder* columns?

I need to extract and reorder some columns from some very large
files.  GNU cut will extract the columns nicely and quickly, but
won't reorder them.  I can do the reordering easily by piping the
output of cut through a perl one-liner, but I'm looking for something
faster.

Is there a GNU utility that will do this?

TIA!

Kynn
-- 
NOTE: In my address everything before the first period is backwards;
and the last period, and everything after it, should be discarded.