AWK One-Liner?

Question

Show how you can use awk on the command line to print the first field of the /etc/passwd file if the file uses a colon ":" as the delimeter.

Any help woudl be appreciated

Answer 1

something like this...



awk 'BEGIN {FS=":"} print $1; exit; ' /etc/passwd



Sets the field separator to colon before beginning; prints the 1st field of the 1st line and then exits.

You may have to work out the single and double quotes on this one.



I almost always run awk scripts from files - saves me trouble with quoting and escaping from the commandline. If my prog does not work at least I know it's not the quotes.

Answer 2

It is a Unix command that won't work in Windows. If you're in Unix you can get help by typing "man awk".



I hope that helps.

Answer 3

A one liner?



Errr...

A bike can't stand on it's own as it's too tyred.