Reading first column of file which start with space also

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi All,

I am trying to read first column of my file using command

cat temp2_sample.cir|cut -d' ' -f1

The content of my file is as follow

          R1    pin23I    pin27I
R2    pin23G    pin27G
R3    pin27F    pin27D
    RWire10    pin15Y    pin23J
VCC1    pin27W    pin13Y
                                      RWire21    pin28W    pin27B

Here I am getting output as

R1
R2
R3
RWire10
VCC1

I am not getting RWire21 in my output. Initially I thought it could be due to more space but if that is the case then R1 and RWire10 should also be not printed.
Please advise me where I can do changes in my command.
Thanks and Regards

---------- Post updated at 03:46 AM ---------- Previous update was at 03:44 AM ----------

Please consider space before R1 and both RWire. It is not showing in forum.

2

Please use code tags for code and data sample.

try

awk '{ print $1}' file
1 Like
3 
sed 's/^ //g' temp2_sample.cir | awk -F" "  '{print $1}'
4

No change I am getting same result.
Here is my file

          R1    pin23I    pin27I
R2    pin23G    pin27G
R3    pin27F    pin27D
    RWire10    pin15Y    pin23J
VCC1    pin27W    pin13Y
                                      RWire21    pin28W    pin27B
5

Getting same result using which code?
If you use Pamu's code you should get something like:

$ cat infile
          R1    pin23I    pin27I
R2    pin23G    pin27G
R3    pin27F    pin27D
    RWire10    pin15Y    pin23J
VCC1    pin27W    pin13Y
                                      RWire21    pin28W    pin27B
$ awk '{print $1}' infile
R1
R2
R3
RWire10
VCC1
RWire21
1 Like
6

Thanks All for your reply.
I am getting result with pamu's code.
But I still dont understand why there is issue with cat and cut command.

7

cut will treat every space delimiter as separate column. so eliminating the spaces and aligning the output will be good with cut. awk will be able to handle task like this easily.

1 Like