Subject: bug#20928: cut (v. 8.21), using -f option with a single column

From: "Kuchta, Tomasz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2015 08:18:25 +0000

Hello.

I’m not sure if this is a bug - I just wanted to let you know.
Thanks,
Tomek

——

When there is more than one column and we go beyond the number of columns with the -f option, the output is empty

$ echo "test1 test2" | cut -d' ' -f1
test1
$ echo "test1 test2" | cut -d' ' -f2
test2
$ echo "test1 test2" | cut -d' ' -f3

$

—— 

When there is only one column and we go beyond 1 with the -f option, the output remains the first column

$ echo "test1" | cut -d' ' -f1
test1
$ echo "test1" | cut -d' ' -f2
test1
$ echo "test1" | cut -d' ' -f3
test1

My setup:

$ cut --version
cut (GNU coreutils) 8.21
Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

Written by David M. Ihnat, David MacKenzie, and Jim Meyering.

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Ubuntu
Description:	Ubuntu 14.04.2 LTS
Release:	14.04
Codename:	trusty