<p>I am using this command:</p>

<p>cut -d: -f2 

<p>To sort and reedit text, Is there a more efficient way to do this without using sed or awk?</p>

<p>I would also like to know how I would append a period to the end of each field</p>

<p>At the moment the output is like $x['s'] and I would like it to be $x['s'] .</p>

<p>Just using standard unix tools</p>

<p>edit: I just wanted to know if it was possible without sed or awk, otherwise how would you do it with awk?</p>

Short answer:
not really
Longer answer:
```
cut
```
is intended for slicing up lines of text, it does that well. If you need a more complicated behavior, you'll  need a text manipulation language. You have rejected the old time answers, so I'll recommend
```
perl
```
.
Any particular reason you don't want to use
```
sed
```
or
```
awk
```
?