Re: Feature request: handling space-delimited data with cut

[Jim Meyering]

Pádraig Brady wrote:
> Jim Meyering wrote:
...
>>> How about supporting: cut -d '[:space:]'
>>
>> Why? ;-)
>
> Sorry, I was playing devil's advocate but was too terse.
> The advantage of cut -d '[:whatever:]' is that it would be trivial
> to implement and would save a data copy between tr and cut.
> Also if cutting a range of fields, one can maintain the original
> separators which might be desired. Also since this is the common
> case, it's slightly less syntax than tr .... | cut ....
>
> The other side of the argument is that this is new functionality,
> which is bad from a portability/documentation/learning standpoint.
>
> I'm 55:45 against adding cut -d '[:blank:]'

I agree that it's tempting, but it seems too hard to justify.