cut - cuts out sections of each line in a file and prints to standard output 

cut [options] [FILE...]

-b extracts by bytes 
-c extracts by characters
-f extracts by field 
-d extract by given deliminator (TAB by default)

cut -c 1,2 example.txt (Cut first two characters of each line in example.txt)
cut -b 1-3 5-7 example.txt (Cut first three bytes and bytes 5,6,7 from each line in example.txt)
cut -d ',' -f 2 example.txt (Using ',' as the deliminator, extract the second field from each line in example.txt. In other words
                              the second item in a comma seperated list)