I had been guilty of not reading (i.e., unaware of !) the "info sort"
material
'man sort' specifies the expected argument of option -k, although in a much
more arid way (as always for GNU commands: 'info' provides the full
documentation):
-k, --key=KEYDEF
sort via a key; KEYDEF gives location and type
(...)
KEYDEF is F[.C][OPTS][,F[.C][OPTS]] for start and stop position,
where F is a field number and C a character position in the field; both are
origin 1, and the stop position defaults to the line's end.
"cut" is not yet in my scripting vocabulary.
'cut' can select fields, specified after -f as you specify pages to print (so
"-2" means "every field up to the second one; I could have written "1,2" for
the same effect), delimited by one single character (the tabulation is the
default but a different one can be specified after -d). See 'info cut' for
the full documentation.
