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

You can set the Field Separator:

... | awk 'BEGIN {FS="\t"}; {print $1}'

Excellent read:

https://docs.freebsd.org/info/gawk/gawk.info.Field_Separators.html