Re: cut: Changing order of output fields

[Jim Meyering]

Paolo Bonzini <address@hidden> wrote:
>> No.  Sorry.  Adding such functionality (already available via
>> other tools) would make cut's code more complex and less maintainable.
>> If you want to reorder the fields, use gawk, perl, sed, etc.
>> or a combination of cut and paste.
>
> Since I see you're online :-) what about the patch to add cut -v (so
> that `cut -vf1' would output all fields but the first) that I had sent
> you quite a long time ago?

Thanks for the reminder, and for including a ChangeLog entry
for the original patch.

Would you please make these minor changes and resend it?

  - don't add the short-named `-v' option;  we try hard not to
    add short-named options -- this limits potential conflicts
    with other versions of such programs.

  - name the new option --complement rather than --invert, to be
    consistent with tr.

  - update coreutils.texi, too

Your usage change added this line:

   -v, --invert-match      print only the fields that were not indicated\n\

Since this affects byte and character lists, too, how about this:
     --complement  complement the set of selected bytes, characters, or fields.

along with a change that adjusts the preceding -b, -c, -f
descriptions to say `select only these bytes', ...characters, ...fields

Jim