How to cut a file using " ", but fields can be separated with more than one " "

Hello,

let's say I have a text file:

 
word11 word12 word13
word21 word22 word23
word31 word32 word33

and I want to put the second field of each line into a list:

set list = `cut -d" " -f2 ${1}`

and I use space (" ") as a delimiter, only that there's a catch:
there can be more than one space between two words, for example:

 
word11 word12    word13
word21    word22 word23
word31 word32 word33

how do I ignore the multiple spaces, and make sure that:
list == {word12 word22 word32}

thanks,
Shira.

set list = `awk {print $2}' ${1}`

try awk

> echo "word1 word2 word3" | cut -d" " -f2
word2
> echo "word1  word2 word3" | cut -d" " -f2

> echo "word1  word2 word3" | tr -s " " | cut -d" " -f2
word2
> echo "word1  word2 word3" | awk '{print $2}'         
word2

The tr -s will suppress repeated consecutive characters; thus eliminating the extra space characters.
Awk natively separates on space (one or more) or tab characters.

Thanks!
I was wondering if there's a solution that involves perhaps a pipeline or a loop instead of an awk?
I thought about

set list = `cat ${1} | cut -d" " -f3`

but it didn't work...

Hey Joey, thanks so much!

how do I write it (with tr) in my script?
like this?

set list = `tr -s " " | cut -d" " -f2 ${1}`

or like this:

set list = `cat ${1} | tr -s " " | cut -d" " -f2`

or in a different way?
And what is the tr function anyway? what does it do?

> cat file146
val1 val2 val3
val4  val5 val6
val7   val8  val9

> tr -s " " <file146 | cut -d" " -f2
val2
val5
val8

> tr -s " " <file146 | cut -d" " -f2 >file146.out
> cat file146.out
val2
val5
val8

OR....

> mylist=`tr -s " " <file146 | cut -d" " -f2`
> echo ${mylist}
val2 val5 val8

OK, I read about it, tr is a genial command!
It worked!
Joey, you're the best, thanks so much!

since tr can only read from the standard input (and I need to read from a text file), this is how I wrote it (and it worked):

set list = `cat ${1} | tr -s " " | cut -d" " -f2`

Thanks again so much.

mylist=`tr -s " " <file146 | cut -d" " -f2`

The <file146 accomplishes a similar task to a cat file146 command at the beginning.
Thus the following are equivalent:

mylist=`tr -s " " <file146 | cut -d" " -f2`

mylist=`cat file146 | tr -s " " | cut -d" " -f2`

Although, programmers prefer the first example.

no need for the Useless Cat

set list = `tr -s ' ' < ${1} | cut -d' ' -f2`

Hello vgersh99,

so if I understand correctly, you redirect
${1} | cut -d' ' -f2
into
tr -s ' '
and then place it in the list.

But as I recall, each statement has to start with a command, but ${1} isn't a command.
I understand this works, but how does it work, actually?

No, that's incorrect.

tr -s ' ' < ${1} | cut -d' ' -f2

You make '${1}' to be a stdin input to "tr -s ' '".
The output of the this (tr) operation gets pipped as stdin input to 'cut'.

Oh, ok, now I got it.
Thanks.