[bug-gawk] Gawk Enhancement Suggestion

[Ed Morton]

Arnold - could we get a "cut()" function for gawk similar to the UNIX one of the 
same name that just lets people select specific fields or ranges of fields? 
Below is some details (copied from something I posted at comp.lang.awk).

Regards,

    Ed.

A function that returns a string of selected fields is very often all we need. 
e.g.:

print cut($0,3)       # print from the 3rd field to the end of the record using 
FS as separator
print cut($0,3,",")   # print from the 3rd field to the end of the record using 
"," as separator
print cut($0,"3-7")   # print from the 3rd field to the 7th field
print cut($0,"3,5,7") # print the 3rd, 5th, and 7th fields

The separating substring between the fields would just be whatever separator 
preceeded the trailing fields. So, with this input (with leading blanks):

    a b    c  d

the following code snippets would produce the output that follows them:

print cut($0,"1,3")
a    c

print cut($0,"1,3",/[[:blank:]]+/)
 b

print cut($0,"1-3")
a b    c

print cut($0,"2,4")
b  d

print cut($0,"1-4")
a b    c  d

Obviously $0 can be replaced by any string and cut() should take an optional 4th 
arg to specify the separator in it's returned string:

print cut($0,"1,3",FS,OFS)
a c

print cut($0,"1,3",/[[:blank:]]+/,"#")
#b

print cut($0,"1-3",FS,OFS)
a b c

print cut($0,"2,4",FS,":")
b:d

print cut($0,"1-4",FS,"|")
a|b|c|d