See info below. So "cut -o" was rejected by the POSIX committee I guess, but it seems like a good idea to me. If we can't have "cut -o", how about a new program "cuto" that we can add to our systems if we want it? Has any such thing been written? How hard would it be to write it? I guess the "cut -o" plan was rejected about 7 years ago. Mike http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/000095399/utilities/cut.html A proposal to enhance cut with the following option: -o Preserve the selected field order. When this option is specified, each byte, character, or field (or ranges of such) shall be written in the order specified by the list option-argument, even if this requires multiple outputs of the same bytes, characters, or fields. was rejected because this type of enhancement is outside the scope of the IEEE P1003.2b draft standard.