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how to select a line using awk

Hi,
I wish to know how to select a line using awk.
when I do "`ps -ax | grep "pattern" | awk {'print $5'}`"
it gives me following output
/pattern
/pattern
/pattern
/pattern
/pattern

I want to select first line of above output for some
comparision.
Please help me to solve the above problem.

have a look at `head' (-n 1)

Quote:

Originally Posted by sharad

a quick and dirty way to get just the first line of the output would be with "head", like so:

Code:

ps ax | grep "pattern" | awk '{ print $5 }' | head -n 1

EDIT: sorry, just realized that a reply had already been posted... sometimes i forget to refresh the tabs before posting...

Or just for fun if you just wanna use awk:

Code:

ps ax | awk '/pattern/ {if (p == "") {p = $5}} END {print p}'

jlinkels

Another one

Code:

ps auxwwf | awk '/pattern/ {print $5; exit;}'

Darn nx5000, yours is more elegant than mine.

But mine is less comprehensible :)

jlinkels