How can I get 2nd and third column in tab delim file in bash?

cut(1) was made expressly for this purpose:

cut -f 2-3 input.txt > output.txt

bash process tabs delimited

Cut is probably the best choice here, second to that is awk

awk -F"\t" '{print $2 "\t" $3}' input > out

bash process tabs delimited

expanding on the answer of carl-norum, using only tab as a delimiter, not all blanks:

cut -d$'\t' -f 2-3 input.txt > output.txt

don't put a space between d and $

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