[plug] Manipulating a text file

[Steve Vertigan]

"Earnshaw, Mike" wrote:

> I am having trouble extracting the first columns of our passwd file into
> another file ...
> 
> mike:x:500:500 ....
> 
> I have about 100 users and I just want the names column. I have played
> around a bit with cut and awk but the correct syntax is eluding me. I
> think I may need to get the 'nutshell' book ...

I haven't got round to learning cut or awk but this is one way to do it
with perl.
# perl -F: -ane 'print "$F[0]\n";' /etc/passwd

Regards,
Steve

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