Re: "cut" command not working as expected

[David selby]

David selby wrote:

I need to get the first two file names from a directory ...
My code
directory=$(ls -r --format=single-column)

works perfect and gives me ...

20030617Jun17.tar.gz 20030616Jun16.tar.gz 20030615Jun15.tar.gz 
20030614Jun14.tar.gz 20030613Jun13.tar.gz 20030612Jun12.tar.gz 
20030611Jun11.tar.gz 20030610Jun10.tar.gz 20030609Jun09.tar.gz 
20030608Jun08.tar.gz 20030607Jun07.tar.gz 20030606Jun06.tar.gz 
20030605Jun05.tar.gz 20030604Jun04.tar.gz 20030603Jun03.tar.gz 
20030602Jun02.tar.gz 20030601Jun01.tar.gz 20030531May31.tar.gz 
20030530May30.tar.gz 20030529May29.tar.gz 20030528May28.tar.gz 
20030527May27.tar.gz 20030526May26.tar.gz 20030525May25.tar.gz 
20030524May24.tar.gz 20030523May23.tar.gz 20030522May22.tar.gz 
20030521May21.tar.gz 20030520May20.tar.gz 20030519May19.tar.gz 
20030518May18.tar.gz 20030517May17.tar.gz 20030516May16.tar.gz 
20030515May15.tar.gz 20030514May14.tar.gz 20030513May13.tar.gz 
20030512May12.tar.gz 20030511May11.tar.gz 20030510May10.tar.gz 
20030509May09.tar.gz 20030508May08.tar.gz 20030507May07.tar.gz 
20030506May06.tar.gz 20030505May05.tar.gz 20030504May04.tar.gz 
20030503May03.tar.gz 20030426Apr26.tar.gz 20030419Apr19.tar.gz 
20030412Apr12.tar.gz 20030405Apr05.tar.gz 20030329Mar29.tar.gz 
20030322Mar22.tar.gz 20030315Mar15.tar.gz 20030308Mar08.tar.gz 
20030301Mar01.tar.gz 20030222Feb22.tar.gz 20030215Feb15.tar.gz 
20030208Feb08.tar.gz 20030205Feb05.tar.gz

I want to cut the first two file names from the list ... To my way of 
thinking this should be easy ...

cut -d' ' -f2 $directory

The xterm goes nuts and ends up in hyroglyphics ! At a guess I would 
say that the white space between .gz & 200... may not be space but may 
have a different ascii value. I have not found a utility to display 
raw ASCII for a file yet to check this out.

I am a relative begginer at learning bash ...

Any suggestions

Dave



Many thanks everyone, realise my mistake with cut and file names, also 
did not realise "tail" command existed, far neater way of doing it ... 
many thanks once again

Dave

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