Trouble with cut command after executing ss command

Question

Here is the basic cut syntax I'm using:

[jay@webserver ~]$ ss -tn
State      Recv-Q Send-Q                                  Local Address:Port                                                 Peer Address:Port              
ESTAB      0      52                                      xxx.xx.xx.xx:xx                                                  xxx.xx.xx.xx:xx              
ESTAB      0      232                                     xxx.xx.xx.xx:xx                                                 xxx.xx.xx.xx:xx     

But when I try to cut on the fields, I don't get the appropriate output:

[jay@webserver ~]$ ss -tn | grep -v State | cut -d$'\t' -f3,4
ESTAB      0      36     xxx.xx.xx.xx:xx                 xxx.xx.xx.xx:xx              
ESTAB      0      68     xxx.xx.xx.xx:xx                 xxx.xx.xx.xx:xx  

The only thing I can think of is that the delimter isn't a tab but in that case how could I get the output I'm wanting?

Answer 1

ss's output is separated by spaces. I suggest to use awk:

ss -tn | grep -v State | awk '{print $3,$4}'

Answer 2

If you don't mind using awk you can do with (this also saves a call to grep):

ss -tn | awk '$0!~/State/{print $3, $4}'

Answer 3

Use awk instead, which by default counts one or more whitespace characters as a single delimiter:

ss -tn | grep -v State | awk '{print $3,$4}'

Also, here's a more general way to skip the first row:

ss -tn | tail -n+2 | awk '{print $3,$4}'

Answer 4

This works on my machine. Basically, change each of 8 spaces to tab, remove other spaces.

ss -tn | unexpand -t 8 | tr $'\t' '|' |tr -d [:blank:] | tr '|' $'\t' | expand -t 1 | cut -f4- -d ' '

or this one:

ss -tn | expand -t 1 | unexpand -t 8 | cut -f4- -d$'\t'