Help identifying the first word in a string

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi all, I'd like to know how to identify the first word in a string (in bash) for e.g.

echo "enter your name"
read name
(user enters 'Joe Bloggs' for e.g.)

echo "hello $name"
(output says "hello Joe")

Thanks for any help

2 
 
echo "enter your name"
read name
name=$(echo $name | cut -d" " -f1)
echo "hello $name"
3 
read name
echo "Hello ${name%% *}"
4

Spot on guys, thanks very much for your quick responses, much appreciated

5

@Scrutinizer
I have seen splitting/tokenizing a string using % OR # earlier also in other threads but never really understood how exactly that works.
Could you please explain that command?

6

Hi, this particular expansion cuts the longest match of space followed by any character off of the end of the string. It is described here with examples: 2.6.2 Parameter Expansion

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