Quantifiers in a regular expression used with awk behave unexpected

Question

I want to process this list: (Of course this is just an excerpt.)

    1   S3 -> PC-8-Set
    2   S3 -> PC-850-Set
    3   S3 -> ANSI-Set
    4   S3 ->         


        

Answer 1

Try

awk --re-interval -F '[[:blank:]]{1,}' '{printf ("%s ", $2)}' list

--re-interval

Allow interval expressions (see Regexp Operators) in regexps. This is now gawk's default behavior. Nevertheless, this option remains both for backward compatibility, and for use in combination with the --traditional option.