CUT Print selected parts of lines from each FILE to standard output. Using cut to facilitate a zone transfer. host will list host information and the 4th item on each line is the IP addresses of the host. Using a pipe and host, we can only extract the IP addresses. host -l isp.net | cut '-d ' -f 4 Other uses: echo $LOGNAME | cut -c1-1 Switches: -d, --delimiter=DELIM use DELIM instead of TAB for field delimiter -s, --only-delimited do not print lines not containing delimiters -b, --bytes=LIST output only these bytes -c, --characters=LIST output only these characters -f, --fields=LIST output only these fields Use one, and only one of -b, -c or -f. Each LIST is made up of one range, or many ranges separated by commas. Each range is one of: N N'th byte, character or field, counted from 1 N- from N'th byte, character or field, to end of line N-M from N'th to M'th (included) byte, character or field -M from first to M'th (included) byte, character or field With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.