How to get the second column from command output?

Question

My command\'s output is something like:

1540 \"A B\"
   6 \"C\"
 119 \"D\"

The first column is always a number, followed by a space, then a

Answer 1

If you have GNU awk this is the solution you want:

$ awk '{print $1}' FPAT='"[^"]+"' file
"A B"
"C"
"D"