> The following command > > $ echo a,b | cut -d , -f 2,1 > prints > > a,b > > instead of > > b,a > > as the manual page of cut(1) tells.
Quoting from the ``rationale'' section of http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/cut.html : The list option-arguments are historically used to select the portions of the line to be written, but do not affect the order of the data. For example: echo abcdefghi | cut -c6,2,4-7,1 yields "abdefg". A proposal to enhance cut with the following option: -o Preserve the selected field order. When this option is specified, each byte, character, or field (or ranges of such) shall be written in the order specified by the list option-argument, even if this requires multiple outputs of the same bytes, characters, or fields. was rejected because this type of enhancement is outside the scope of the IEEE P1003.2b draft standard.
