Select a particular column using awk or cut or perl

Question

I have a requirement to select the 7th column from a tab delimited file. eg:

cat filename | awk \'{print $7}\'

The issue is that the data in th

Answer 1

If fields are separated by tabs and your concern is that some fields contain spaces, there is no problem here, just:

cut -f 7

(cut defaults to tab delimited fields.)