Rearrange columns using cut

You may also combine cut and paste:

paste <(cut -f2 file.txt) <(cut -f1 file.txt)

via comments: It's possible to avoid bashisms and remove one instance of cut by doing:

paste file.txt file.txt | cut -f2,3

For the cut(1) man page:

Use one, and only one of -b, -c or -f. Each LIST is made up of one range, or many ranges separated by commas. Selected input is written in the same order that it is read, and is written exactly once.

It reaches field 1 first, so that is printed, followed by field 2.

Use awk instead:

awk '{ print $2 " " $1}' file.txt

using just the shell,

while read -r col1 col2
do
  echo $col2 $col1
done <"file"