Why is it that:
free | cut -c67- && free | cut -c55-61
gives me buffer and cache size, but
free -s4 | cut -c67- && free -s4 | cut -c55-61
gives me only the cache size.
From Bash man page:
SHELL GRAMMA [...] Lists AND and OR lists are sequences of one of more pipelines separated by the && and || control operators, respec‐ tively. AND and OR lists are executed with left associativity. An AND list has the form command1 && command2 command2 is executed if, and only if, command1 returns an exit status of zero.
the && operator won't execute command2 until command1 exited with return value 0.
Is command free -s4 | cut -c67-,56-61 more close to what you want?