# choose
> A human-friendly and fast alternative to cut and awk

## Summary
A human-friendly alternative to cut and awk. Select fields from text using intuitive 0-based indexing, negative indices, and ranges with minimal syntax.

## Capabilities
- Intuitive 0-based field selection
- Negative indices to select from the end
- Range selection (e.g., 2:5, :3, -2:)
- Custom field delimiters

## When to Use
- Extracting columns from command output
- Want simpler syntax than awk for field selection
- Quick column extraction in pipelines

## When NOT to Use
- Need awk's full text processing capabilities
- Scripts that must be portable to systems without choose

## Usage Patterns
### Select a specific field
```
echo 'one two three' | choose 1
```
Prints 'two' (0-based indexing)

### Select a range of fields
```
echo 'a b c d e' | choose 1:3
```
Prints fields 1 through 3: 'b c d'

## Input / Output
- **stdin**: Delimited text data
- **stdout**: Selected fields

## Installation
- **homebrew**: `brew install choose-rust`
- **cargo**: `cargo install choose`

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Source: https://littlescripts.sh/tools/choose
