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

echo "LOAD_SETTLED    LOAD_INIT       2011-01-13 03:50:01" | awk -v var="test" 'BEGIN { FS = "[ \t]+" } ; { print $1 "\t" var "\t" $3 }'