I am trying print the first field of the first row of an output. Here is the case. I just need to print only SUSE
from this output.
# cat /etc/*release SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (x86_64) VERSION = 11 PATCHLEVEL = 2
Tried with cat /etc/*release | awk {'print $1}'
but that print the first string of every row
SUSE VERSION PATCHLEVEL
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Answer
Specify NR
if you want to capture output from selected rows:
awk 'NR==1{print $1}' /etc/*release
An alternative (ugly) way of achieving the same would be:
awk '{print $1; exit}'
An efficient way of getting the first string from a specific line, say line 42, in the output would be:
awk 'NR==42{print $1; exit}'