How to cut the result of ps command

Question

Could you please explain this command? and what does 48 means ?
ps -laef | cut -c 48- | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Run it per partes and you see how the output changes. (it should be safe in this case)

ps -laef

ps -laef | cut -c 48-

ps -laef | cut -c 48- | sort

ps -laef | cut -c 48- | sort | uniq -c

ps -laef | cut -c 48- | sort | uniq -c | sort -n

See the man page of cut(1) for explanation of what parameters do.

-c, --characters=LIST 
    select only these characters

N- 
    from N'th byte, character or field, to end of line