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I'm having trouble how to through this step for my homework. I insert the command:

tail -n +2 ../data/Pacifici2013_data.csv | cut -d ’;’ -f

and the output comes out saying that cut: option requires an argument -- 'f'

I have no idea how to proceed with this I'm following the book but it doesn't seem to help you out when you encounter this problem. How can I proceed?

Chris Davies
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ChrisCast
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    If you're really using fancy quotes, i.e. ’;’, then don't. It'll give you no end of troubles and unexpected errors in your code. You should be using straightforward ordinary quotes, i.e. ';'. – Chris Davies Jan 23 '17 at 00:15

1 Answers1

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-f option of cut for sure requires something more.
Option -f is for "field".
You have to define which field you want cut to return.

For example :
-f1 returns first field (separated by -d option => ;)
-f1-10 returns field 1 up to 10.
-f1,5 returns field 1 and 5

See this real examples:

$ echo '1;q;w' |cut -d';' -f
cut: option requires an argument -- 'f'
Try 'cut --help' for more information.
$ echo '1;q;w' |cut -d';' -f2
q
$ echo '1;q;w' |cut -d';' -f2-3
q;w
$ echo '1;q;w' |cut -d';' -f1,3
1;w

PS: Also mind that ../data/Pacifici2013_data.csv refers to a csv file that is not in current directory but in a directory above (higher) than current. For current directory you should use only one dot ./data/<...> or just the filename directly. If file is in a completely different directory use full path.

George Vasiliou
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