My friend pointed out strange behavior trying to do: $ ls -l | cut -d' ' -f7
kayve@kayve-HP-Compaq-Elite-8300-CMT:~/src$ ls -l | cut -d' ' -f7 40829864 35769753 93222080 70233788 56057072 May Sep 86001449 14117396 22272241 kayve@kayve-HP-Compaq-Elite-8300-CMT:~/src$ ls -l total 723072 -rw-rw-r-- 1 kayve kayve 40829864 Sep 21 2020 arenalinux_64bit_3.10beta.tar.gz drwxr-xr-x 6 kayve kayve 4096 Sep 8 2021 bitcoin-22.0 -rw-rw-r-- 1 kayve kayve 35769753 Apr 22 2022 bitcoin-22.0-x86_64-linux-gnu.tar.gz drwxrwxr-x 17 kayve kayve 4096 Jun 28 18:08 coreutils -rwxrwxr-x 1 kayve kayve 93222080 Apr 19 11:06 en-croissant_0.10.0_amd64.AppImage drwxrwxr-x 3 kayve kayve 4096 Jan 24 2022 flatiron -rw-rw-r-- 1 kayve kayve 70233788 Sep 18 2020 google-chrome-stable_current_amd64.deb -rw-rw-r-- 1 kayve kayve 56057072 Jul 28 2020 google-earth.deb drwxr-xr-x 4 kayve kayve 4096 Mar 23 2022 LibreOffice_7.3.2.2_Linux_x86-64_deb -rw-rw-r-- 1 kayve kayve 196010288 May 1 2022 LibreOffice_7.3.2_Linux_x86-64_deb.tar.gz -rw-rw-r-- 1 kayve kayve 122102820 Sep 16 2020 Maltego.v4.2.12.13389.deb -rw-rw-r-- 1 kayve kayve 121453 Sep 14 2020 Maltego.v4.2.12.13389.deb.0 -rw-rw-r-- 1 kayve kayve 173677 Sep 14 2020 Maltego.v4.2.12.13389.deb.1 -rw-rw-r-- 1 kayve kayve 35005 Sep 15 2020 Maltego.v4.2.12.13389.deb.2 -rw-rw-r-- 1 kayve kayve 86001449 Sep 15 2020 Maltego.v4.2.12.13389.deb.3 -rw-rw-r-- 1 kayve kayve 14117396 Sep 16 2020 Maltego.v4.2.12.13389.deb.4 drwxrwxr-x 4 kayve kayve 4096 Oct 12 2020 MonoDevelop -rw-rw-r-- 1 kayve kayve 22272241 Oct 10 2020 monodevelop_7.8.4.1-0xamarin6+ubuntu1804b1_amd64.deb -rw-rw-r-- 1 kayve kayve 1601364 May 25 2021 realtek-rtl8814au-dkms_5.8.5.1~git20210331.bdf80b5-0kali1_all.deb -rw-rw-r-- 1 kayve kayve 1795172 May 25 2021 realtek-rtl88xxau-dkms_5.6.4.2~git20210327.c0ce817-0kali2_all.deb drwxrwxr-x 2 kayve kayve 4096 Nov 17 2023 Russ_c_programs drwxrwxr-x 3 kayve kayve 4096 Nov 30 2023 snort-source-files drwxrwxr-x 2 kayve kayve 4096 Jan 24 2023 WordPress kayve@kayve-HP-Compaq-Elite-8300-CMT:~/src$ I believe someone suggested using awk instead, but my friend resisted, I guess opting for improving the simpler cut. I have distilled it sufficiently in my mind to have a clear view on this. My friend pointed out that if you are using comma separated values and I added /etc/passwd, in either case where something like '..::..' or '..,,..' should indicate one or more null fields, if you want to separate by whitespace, i.e. one or more spaces, etc., merging consecutive delimiters might be useful, as illustrated by the above example. Therefore, I am in agreement with my friend that adding this -m to merge delimiters option might be nice. Unfortunately, although I have a good academic background in hacking *NIX C, and am able to install various *NIX distros, e.g. BSD, Gentoo, and Ubuntu, my ability to get up to speed in being part of a digital community is slightly wanting. I am having a hard time installing the coreutils, although I have managed to create a git directory, I am having trouble with compilation, as will be seen below. If anyone has any advice on what I am missing to try to help improve GNU coreutils, I would greatly appreciate the advice. kayve@kayve-HP-Compaq-Elite-8300-CMT:~/src/coreutils$ git show commit 05538e9b4c5a0932ce4e65e71a0cc511e3a8b4b7 (HEAD -> master) Author: Kayven Riese <kay...@gmail.com> Date: Fri Jun 28 17:52:43 2024 -0700 build: update gnulib submodule to latest diff --git a/gnulib b/gnulib index 15cd8edb6..1066dc9c0 160000 --- a/gnulib +++ b/gnulib @@ -1 +1 @@ -Subproject commit 15cd8edb6ec9aed2585e10456d46eec09d5c1b8b +Subproject commit 1066dc9c0bc4ffa65fe117cf055a346482f03b1e kayve@kayve-HP-Compaq-Elite-8300-CMT:~/src/coreutils$ ls AUTHORS configure.ac gnulib-tests man README-package-renamed-to-coreutils tests autom4te.cache COPYING HACKING NEWS README-prereq thanks-gen bootstrap dist-check.mk init.cfg po README-release THANKS.in bootstrap.conf doc lib README README-valgrind THANKStt.in build-aux gl m4 README-hacking scripts TODO cfg.mk gnulib Makefile.am README-install src kayve@kayve-HP-Compaq-Elite-8300-CMT:~/src/coreutils$ make -f cfg.mk ./bootstrap && \ ./configure --quiet && \ make -j $(nproc 2>/dev/null || echo 1) ./bootstrap: 244: gperf: not found ./bootstrap: Error: 'gperf' not found ./bootstrap: 314: makeinfo: not found ./bootstrap: Error: 'makeinfo' not found ./bootstrap: 314: texi2pdf: not found ./bootstrap: Error: 'texi2pdf' not found ./bootstrap: See README-prereq for how to get the prerequisite programs make: *** [cfg.mk:61: world] Error 1 kayve@kayve-HP-Compaq-Elite-8300-CMT:~/src/coreutils$ -- Sincerely, Kayven Riese *----------------------------------------------------------* Kayven Riese, MSCS, MS (Physiology and Biophysics) (415) 902 5513 cellular Webmaster http://ChessYoga.org *----------------------------------------------------------*