I have found a little bug in cut(i guess). See that:

a=danilo
echo $a | cut -c -5 # shows danil

a=dánilo
echo $a | cut -c 5 # shows dáni

The option -b equal works. The cut is ignoring the letters with acentuation.

I read in infopages this:

`-c CHARACTER-LIST'
`--characters=CHARACTER-LIST'
     Select for printing only the characters in positions listed in
     CHARACTER-LIST.  The same as `-b' for now, but
     internationalization will change that.  Tabs and backspaces are
     treated like any other character; they take up 1 character.  If an
     output delimiter is specified, (see the description of
     `--output-delimiter'), then output that string between ranges of
     selected bytes.

"The same as `-b' for now, but
     internationalization will change that.". Has not been changed?
This is my locale:

LANG=pt_BR.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=pt_BR:pt:en
LC_CTYPE="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_NUMERIC="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_TIME="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_COLLATE="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_MONETARY="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_MESSAGES="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_PAPER="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_NAME="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_ADDRESS="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_TELEPHONE="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="pt_BR.UTF-8"
LC_ALL=

and the cut version is: cut (GNU coreutils) 7.4

Thanks,

Danilo S. Morăes