How to get the second column from command output

Question

My command s output is something like   1540  A B     6  C   119  D    The first column is always a number  followed by a space  then a double-quoted string   My purpose is to get the second column only  like    A B   C   D    I intended to use  lt some command gt    awk   print  2   to accomplish this  But the question is  some values in the second column contain space s   which happens to be the default delimiter for awk to separate the fields  Therefore  the output is messed up    A  C   D    How do I get the second column s value  with paired quotes  cleanly

User · Answer

This should work to get a specific column out of the command output "docker images":

REPOSITORY                          TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
ubuntu                              16.04               12543ced0f6f        10 months ago       122 MB
ubuntu                              latest              12543ced0f6f        10 months ago       122 MB
selenium/standalone-firefox-debug   2.53.0              9f3bab6e046f        12 months ago       613 MB
selenium/node-firefox-debug         2.53.0              d82f2ab74db7        12 months ago       613 MB


docker images | awk '{print $3}'

IMAGE
12543ced0f6f
12543ced0f6f
9f3bab6e046f
d82f2ab74db7

This is going to print the third column

User · Answer

Or use sed  amp  regex    lt some command gt    sed  s                1

User · Answer

usr bin python import sys   col   int sys argv 1   - 1  for line in sys stdin      columns   line split        try          print columns col       except IndexError            ignore         pass   Then  supposing you name the script as co  say  do something like this to get the sizes of files  the example assumes you re using Linux  but the script itself is OS-independent   -  ls -lh   co 5

User · Answer

You don t need awk for that  Using read in Bash shell should be enough  e g   some command   while read c1 c2  do echo  c2  done   or   while read c1 c2  do echo  c2  done  lt  in txt

User · Answer

awk -F      gsub           print      2       your file

User · Answer

If you have GNU awk this is the solution you want     awk   print  1   FPAT           file  A B   C   D

User · Answer

Use -F  field separator  to split the lines on  s   awk -F       print  2   your input file   or for input from pipe   lt some command gt    awk -F       print  2     output   A B C D

User · Answer

If you could use something other than  awk    then try this instead  echo  1540  A B     cut -d    -f2-   -d is a delimiter  -f is the field to cut and with -f2-  we intend to cut the 2nd field until end

[shell] How to get the second column from command output?

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