On: Exercise #1: Learning awk Basics

[pmarin]

   echo '1 2 3 4' | cut -d' ' -f1

By default cut uses TAB as delimiter

[nimrody → pmarin]

Not to be picky, but still not good enough:

   echo '1    2     3 4' | cut -d' ' -f2

'cut' fails when fields are separated by multiple spaces.

[molinari → nimrody]

I usually pipe through a whitespace-to-single-tab command. So

  echo '1   2  3 4' | sp2tab | cut -f2

would be equivalent to

  echo '1   2  3 4' | awk '{print $2}'

but quicker to write.

[pmarin → nimrody]

Ok.

   > echo '1    2         3 4' | sed 's/  */\t/g' | cut -f2
    2

[Kototama → nimrody]

echo "1 2 3 4" | tr -s " " | cut -f1 -d " "

tr is nice!

[cma → Kototama]

Doesn't work, gets caught on leading spaces:

    echo ' 1 2 3 4' | tr -s " " | cut -f1 -d " "
    >
    echo ' 1 2 3 4' | awk '{print $1}'
    >1