cut the specific column

[peterchu]

I have a file as below ,

#vi test.txt
11 22 3333
aa bb ccc

, they are separated by the space , how can I cut the third column as below.

3333
ccc

[Dave Olker · Accepted solution]

# cat test.txt | awk '{print $3}'

[Jim Mallett]

I prefer Dave's method myself but just so you have a couple tools in your arsenal:

cut -d " " -f 3 test.txt

-d is the delimer
-f is the field number

Jim

[Hein van den Heuvel]

Nitpicking...

I dislike one detail in Dave's solution.

Why activate an additional image (cat) and create a fresh pipe to move the data twice when awk is perfectly happy to read teh file directly?
Furthermore, the all too often (mis)used "cat | awk" reduces functionality for awk.
Notably, it can no longer 'see' the original filename, useful for good error reporting.
Not relevant for this question perhpas, but in general...

Examples:

$ cat xxx
aap noot mies teun
een twee drie vier

$ awk 'BEGIN {print FILENAME}{print $3}' x
xxx
mies
drie

$ cat x | awk 'BEGIN {print FILENAME}{print $3}'

mies
drie

fwiw,
Hein.

[peterchu]

thx