[SOLVED] using cut

puth · 02-18-2010, 03:53 PM

I have the following contents in a files

1|x|Y
2|y|X
3|d|G

I need to get the first character in the 2nd line.in this case 2

i tried
cut -d "|" -f1 filename |head -2 and its returning 1 2

how do i modify my cut statement?

acid_kewpie · 02-18-2010, 03:57 PM

well to directly modify your command, you'd want a tail -n 1 on the end too, but I'm sure there's a better way to do what you want. What actually is the criteria you're working with?

mattca · 02-18-2010, 04:17 PM

Are you only working with this one file? Or does your script need to work for files of arbitrary length?

Using head and tail will work in this case, but it will only work for input files with 3 lines.

pixellany · 02-18-2010, 04:56 PM

Code:

awk 'BEGIN{FS="|"}NR==2{print $1}' filename > newfilename

anomie · 02-18-2010, 05:06 PM

And another possibility for getting the first byte from the second line:

Code:

$ sed -n '2,2p' file_here | cut -b 1

puth · 02-19-2010, 08:16 AM

Thanks,I used sed.

acid_kewpie · 02-19-2010, 08:31 AM

Based on the information we had about this file, I think the most concise solution would be

Code:

echo 2