You mean to say you don't use some-cmd | sed -E 's/^\s+//;s/\s+/ /g' | cut -f$n Rather than some-cmd | awk '{ print $n }' ;) Also I agree it's silly

You mean to say you don't use some-cmd | sed -E 's/^\s+//;s/\s+/ /g' | cut -f$n Rather than some-cmd | awk '{ print $n }' ;) Also I agree it's silly you can't change the field order.