"Extracts records (selectively if requested) from a NPA 
[my group's typical file format]or MAGMA [db schema; 
irrelevant here] table dumps, producing either the 
entire record or (optionally) specified fields in the 
given order.  Parameters can be in any order.

Output is to STDOUT, and can be piped into this program 
(for further selections), or into updated versions of 
exfields.pl or showtable.pl.

The -s option is used to select records according to 
whether a regexp match exists within a -f specified 
field or within the entire record.

The -e option is used, optionally, to specify the 
fieldlist and output field order.

One major use of this program is to create a 
reduced table, whose output contains only selected 
rows and columns.  Another is to transform table format 
or order."