xcut

June 2, 2025 · View on GitHub

xcut is an extended version of the Unix cut command, with support for filtering, column extraction, and flexible delimiters. It is written in Rust and supports cross-platform usage (Linux, macOS, Windows via CMD or Git Bash).

Features

  • Column selection (--cols)
  • Flexible field delimiter (--delim, --max-split)
  • Field filtering with boolean logic and regex (--filter)
  • Output customization (--out-delim, --output)
  • CSV-style header skipping (--no-header)
  • Head/tail output restriction (--head, --tail)
  • Accepts stdin when no input file is specified

Usage

xcut [OPTIONS]

Basic Options

  • -i, --input <INPUT> Path to the input file. Reads from stdin if not specified

  • -f, --filter <FILTER> Filter expression to match lines. Supports regex and boolean logic. Examples:

    • col(3) == "INFO"
    • col(4) =~ "^CPU"
    • col(3) !~ "DEBUG" && col(4) =~ "error"

  • -c, --cols <COLS> List of column numbers to output (1-based index). Example: --cols 1,3

  • --delim <DELIM> Delimiter used to split each line into columns. Default is whitespace

  • --max-split <N> Maximum number of splits to perform when using --delim. Useful to preserve trailing content in the last field

  • --out-delim <OUT_DELIM> Delimiter used to join output fields. Default is a space

  • -o, --output <OUTPUT> Path to output file. Appends to the file if it exists. Defaults to stdout

  • --no-header Skip the first line (e.g. header in CSV files)

  • --head <HEAD> Output only the first N lines (like head)

  • --tail <TAIL> Output only the last N lines (like tail)

  • -h, --help Print help (see a summary with -h)

  • -V, --version Print version

Filtering Expression Examples

You can filter lines using column values. Examples:

ExpressionDescription
col(2) == "INFO"Select rows where column 2 equals "INFO"
col(2) != "INFO"Select rows where column 2 is not "INFO"
col(4) =~ "CPU"Regex match: column 4 contains "CPU"
col(3) !~ "DEBUG"Regex not match
col(2) == "INFO" && col(4) =~ "CPU"Logical AND of two conditions
`col(2) == "INFO"

Examples

## Extract columns 2 and 4 with space as delimiter, max 4 splits
xcut --input sample_logs.txt --cols 2,4 --delim ' ' --max-split 4

# Filter lines where column 3 matches regex and output to a file
xcut --input sample_logs.txt --filter 'col(3) =~ "ERROR"' --output errors.txt

# Only take the first 10 lines, skip the header
xcut --input data.csv --no-header --head 10 --cols 1,2,3 --delim ','

# Use regex negation
xcut --input logs.txt --filter 'col(3) !~ "DEBUG"'

PowerShell Note (Windows)

PowerShell has issues interpreting !~, quotes, and parentheses. For best results on Windows:

  • Use cmd.exe or Git Bash

Running Tests

To run integration tests, make sure the binary is built first:

cargo build
cargo test

The tests expect target/debug/xcut to be available. If you want to run tests directly without building separately, simply use:

cargo test