How to get the second column from command output?

Question

My command\'s output is something like:

1540 \"A B\"
   6 \"C\"
 119 \"D\"

The first column is always a number, followed by a space, then a

Answer 1

This should work to get a specific column out of the command output "docker images":

REPOSITORY                          TAG                 IMAGE ID            CREATED             SIZE
ubuntu                              16.04               12543ced0f6f        10 months ago       122 MB
ubuntu                              latest              12543ced0f6f        10 months ago       122 MB
selenium/standalone-firefox-debug   2.53.0              9f3bab6e046f        12 months ago       613 MB
selenium/node-firefox-debug         2.53.0              d82f2ab74db7        12 months ago       613 MB


docker images | awk '{print $3}'

IMAGE
12543ced0f6f
12543ced0f6f
9f3bab6e046f
d82f2ab74db7

This is going to print the third column

Answer 2

awk -F"|" '{gsub(/\"/,"|");print "\""$2"\""}' your_file