xcut 0.1.0

An extended cut command with regex filtering and formatting
Documentation

xcut – A Flexible Field Extractor and Filter Tool for the Command Line

xcut is an extended version of the Unix cut command, with support for filtering, column extraction, and flexible delimiters. It is written in Rust and supports cross-platform usage (Linux, macOS, Windows via CMD or Git Bash).

Features

  • Column selection (--cols)
  • Flexible field delimiter (--delim, --max-split)
  • Field filtering with boolean logic and regex (--filter)
  • Output customization (--out-delim, --output)
  • CSV-style header skipping (--no-header)
  • Head/tail output restriction (--head, --tail)
  • Accepts stdin when no input file is specified

Usage

xcut [OPTIONS]

Basic Options

  • -i, --input <INPUT> Path to the input file. Reads from stdin if not specified

  • -f, --filter <FILTER> Filter expression to match lines. Supports regex and boolean logic. Examples:

    • col(3) == "INFO"
    • col(4) =~ "^CPU"
    • col(3) !~ "DEBUG" && col(4) =~ "error"

  • -c, --cols <COLS> List of column numbers to output (1-based index). Example: --cols 1,3

  • --delim <DELIM> Delimiter used to split each line into columns. Default is whitespace

  • --max-split <N> Maximum number of splits to perform when using --delim. Useful to preserve trailing content in the last field

  • --out-delim <OUT_DELIM> Delimiter used to join output fields. Default is a space

  • -o, --output <OUTPUT> Path to output file. Appends to the file if it exists. Defaults to stdout

  • --no-header Skip the first line (e.g. header in CSV files)

  • --head <HEAD> Output only the first N lines (like head)

  • --tail <TAIL> Output only the last N lines (like tail)

  • -h, --help Print help (see a summary with -h)

  • -V, --version Print version

Filtering Expression Examples

You can filter lines using column values. Examples:

Expression Description
col(2) == "INFO" Select rows where column 2 equals "INFO"
col(2) != "INFO" Select rows where column 2 is not "INFO"
col(4) =~ "CPU" Regex match: column 4 contains "CPU"
col(3) !~ "DEBUG" Regex not match
col(2) == "INFO" && col(4) =~ "CPU" Logical AND of two conditions
`col(2) == "INFO"

Examples

## Extract columns 2 and 4 with space as delimiter, max 4 splits
xcut --input sample_logs.txt --cols 2,4 --delim ' ' --max-split 4

# Filter lines where column 3 matches regex and output to a file
xcut --input sample_logs.txt --filter 'col(3) =~ "ERROR"' --output errors.txt

# Only take the first 10 lines, skip the header
xcut --input data.csv --no-header --head 10 --cols 1,2,3 --delim ','

# Use regex negation
xcut --input logs.txt --filter 'col(3) !~ "DEBUG"'

PowerShell Note (Windows)

PowerShell has issues interpreting !~, quotes, and parentheses. For best results on Windows:

  • Use cmd.exe or Git Bash

Running Tests

To run integration tests, make sure the binary is built first:

cargo build
cargo test

The tests expect target/debug/xcut to be available. If you want to run tests directly without building separately, simply use:

cargo test