Is it possible to use a string as a delimiter in unix cut command?

Question

Hi, If I want to cut a list of text using a string as a delimiter, is that possible. For e.g. I have a directory where a list of shell scripts call same perl script say abc.pl So when I do $grep abc.pl * in that directory, it gives me following results xyz.sh: abc.pl 1 2 xyz2.sh: abc.pl 2 mno.sh: abc.pl 3 pqr.sh: abc.pl 4 5

I basically want all the output after "abc.pl" (to check what range arguments are being passed to the perl right now)

When I tried $grep abc.pl * | cut -d'abc.pl' -f2 OR $grep abc.pl * | cut -d'abc.pl' -f2 its giving me cut: invalid delimiter

When I read man for cut it states ... delim can be a multi-byte character. ... What am I doing/interpreting wrong here?

Thanks. Devang Kamdar.

Answer 1

why not use grep abc.pl | awk '{print $3, $4}'?

Answer 2

When I read man for cut it states ... delim can be a multi-byte character.

Multi-byte, but just one character, not a string.

canti:~$ ll | cut --delimiter="delim" -f 1,2
cut: the delimiter must be a single character
Try `cut --help' for more information.

canti:~$ cut --version  
cut (GNU coreutils) 5.97

You can specify only output delimiter as a string (useless in this case):

 --output-delimiter=STRING                                                          
        use STRING as the output delimiter the default is to use the input delimiter

Answer 3

$ grep abc.pl * | cut -d' ' -f3-999

In that case just use the space character as the delimiter.