choose

Select first field

$ echo "one two three" | choose 0

$ echo "a b c d e" | choose 2

$ echo "a b c d e" | choose 1:3

$ echo "a b c d e" | choose -1

$ echo "a b c d e" | choose -3:

$ echo "a,b,c" | choose -f ',' 1

$ echo "a1b2c" | choose -f '[0-9]' 0:

$ echo "a b c d e" | choose 1:4 --exclusive

choose [options] field[:end]

choose is a human-friendly, fast alternative to cut and awk for selecting fields from text input. It uses Python-like slice syntax with zero-based indexing, negative indices for counting from the end, and inclusive ranges by default.
Unlike cut, which requires exact delimiter specification and uses 1-based indexing, choose handles whitespace splitting automatically and supports regex-based field separators. Written in Rust, it is significantly faster than awk for simple field selection tasks.

-f, --field-separator sep

Field separator (regex supported)

Output separator (default: space)

Exclude end index from range

Select characters instead of fields

Use non-greedy field splitting

N

Single field (0-indexed)

Range from N to M (inclusive)

From N to end

From start to M

Nth field from end

Zero-indexed (first field is 0). Faster than cut for long inputs, much faster than awk. Install via cargo or brew install choose-rust.

cut(1), awk(1), sed(1)