How to use cut to trim the first x variable spaces

Question

I have a file that is like this:

I want to remove the spaces.

67 lol
143 hi
21 test
1 ciao
5 lo

I know that I can use sed to do that, for example with:

cat ciao | sed 's/[[:space:]]*\([[:digit:]]* .*\)/\1/' | sort -g

but my professor says that I can easily use cut to do that... but I really don't know how.

Something like this:

cat ciao | rev | cut -d' ' -f1 | rev

would not work because I lose the number information. lol hi test ciao lo

Using `GNU sed`, it's easier : `sed 's/^[[:space:]]*//' file` — User123, Mar 07 '22 at 12:23
Maybe [How do I trim leading and trailing whitespace from each line of some output?](https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/606459/279389) was meant. — Wiktor Stribiżew, Mar 07 '22 at 12:24
Cross-posted: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/693265/how-to-use-cut-to-trim-the-first-x-variable-spaces — JRFerguson, Mar 07 '22 at 12:32
@User123 I know how to use sed, I also wrote that I used sed to get it working, but I was curious on how to do it with cut. — Allexj, Mar 07 '22 at 12:35
@WiktorStribiżew nope, because I also need the numbers, and that way I erase the numbers :/ — Allexj, Mar 07 '22 at 12:37
there's [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/46926851) which uses `cut` ... but it also uses `tr` to `s`queeze out extra spaces — markp-fuso, Mar 07 '22 at 13:47
I found an answer myself: https://stackoverflow.com/a/71382100/5953720 — Allexj, Mar 07 '22 at 13:49

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 07 '22 at 13:49

0

I found an answer: I can do this:

cat ciao | rev | cut -d ' ' -f 1,2 | rev

to not lose the number information. works!

answered Mar 07 '22 at 13:49

Allexj

1 Answers1