formating console output (omitting parts you do not want)
 

So there is uptime, which gives me a format like this:

But all I'd like is the time the machine is up, like so:

What tool could i pipe to to omit the rest of the line to acheive this?

Now...

How do I format it in such a day that it can pick up only the uptime.... when it can range from what you see above to

i did a `set list` in VI, no tabs in between feilds, just spaces....



I need a solution that will work both on various GNU/Linux distros AND BSD's

wanna make out?



thanks!

Glad it worked out for you. cut and sed can be very userful.

I knew there was something like cut, and sed and awk are *vey* useful. I'll admit tho that I need to learn more about these. I have some uncomitted time this weekend that I'll put towards learning more about these tools.

Something like doing a df -h and adding up the net total of disk space would be nice. These tools should help accomplish that.

thanks for the help.

This may be slightly OT but if you are interesting in being able to tell at a glance what your uptime is, along with a lot of other useful stats, check out gkrellm. http://web.wt.net/~billw/gkrellm/gkrellm.html It's totally cool and gives you a central, graphical way to keep tabs on your system. -- J.W.

I don't run X on servers ;) but thanks for the suggestion.

torsmo is also a *very* nice app. I find it's interface much more appealing.