Tab separated values in awk

Question

How do I select the first column from the TAB separated string?

# echo \"LOAD_SETTLED    LOAD_INIT       2011-01-13 03:50:01\" | awk -F\'\\t\' \'{print $1}\'         


        

Answer 1

Make sure they're really tabs! In bash, you can insert a tab using C-v TAB

$ echo "LOAD_SETTLED    LOAD_INIT       2011-01-13 03:50:01" | awk -F$'\t' '{print $1}'
LOAD_SETTLED