cut vs awk in linux

In linux for selecting columns we generally use cut command. The problem with cut is that we can give delimiter of length 1 only. In case the columns have variable spaces in the output then cut fails.

In such situation awk come for the rescue.

Syntax : awk '{print $2, $3}' 

Here $2, $3 are the column we want to print. These columns can have multiple spaces between them

More links :

http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl1_awk.htm

http://lowfatlinux.com/linux-awk.html