Pádraig Brady wrote: > > You probably want to squeeze adjacent blanks: > > wc FILE | tr -s '[:blank:]' ' ' | cut -d' ' -f2
Note you might wonder why cut doesn't support -d'[:blank:]' to auto skip runs of horizontal whitespace. Details here: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-coreutils/2009-05/threads.html#00153 Note also that wc can output particular counts in isolation. I.E. this will get the same affect as your original: wc -w FILE | cut -d' ' -f1 cheers, Pádraig. _______________________________________________ Bug-coreutils mailing list Bug-coreutils@gnu.org http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/bug-coreutils
