Removing columns of characters from a line
In a file with a similar content shown below, one can remove certain columns based on the delimiters. aaa:123:sometext1:name1:zz bbbbbbb:44457:sometext2:name2:yy2 ccccc:783456:sometext3:name3:xx3 If, for example, one wants to remove the part sometext# in each line, use the following command cut -d: -f1,2,4,5 filename : is the delimiting character. filename is the name of the file that contains the text (duh!!) If the delimiter is space , such as the following bb1 457 sometext2 name2 yy2 use the following command: cut -d' ' -f1,2,4,5 filename