How do I get a part of the output of a command in Linux Bash?

Question

How do I get a part of the output of a command in Bash?

For example, the command php -v outputs:

PHP 5.3.28 (cli) (built: Jun 23 2014 16:25:09         


        

Answer 1

You could try the below AWK command,

$ php -v | awk 'NR==1{print $1,$2,$3}'
PHP 5.3.28 (cli)

It prints the first three columns from the first line of input.

• NR==1 (condition)ie, execute the statements within {} only if the value of NR variable is 1.
• {print $1,$2,$3} Print col1,col2,col3. , in the print statement means OFS (output field separator).