Bash newbie help, swapping stuff around.

[oopsie]

I apologise for not being able to put what I mean into words very well. Is there an easy way to swap two pieces of text around?

I have a monstrosity of a line I've written for bash, and inside it is this

cut -d ' ' -f 5,8
Which you probably know shows the fifth and eighth element in a line of elements separated by spaces. What I'd like to know how to do though is to swap them around. I tried

cut -d ' ' -f 8,5
But that doesn't swap them around at all.

So, is there an easy way to do this?

[MadCow108]

maybe cut can also do it somehow but I personally prefer awk for splitting.
displaying 5 and 8 swapped would be:
echo "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8" | awk '{print $8" "$5}'

[ghostdog74]

I'd like to know how to do though is to swap them around. I tried

cut -d ' ' -f 8,5
But that doesn't swap them around at all.

So, is there an easy way to do this?

use awk, as shown, or you can just the shell without calling external commands.


var="1 2 3 4 5"
set -- $var
echo "$5 $3"