How to specify more spaces for the delimiter using

Question

Is there any way to specify a field delimiter for more spaces with the cut command? (like " "+) ? For example: In the following string, I like to reach value '3744', what field delimiter I should say?

$ps axu | grep jboss

jboss     2574  0.0  0.0   3744  1092 ?        S    Aug17   0:00 /bin/sh /usr/java/jboss/bin/run.sh -c example.com -b 0.0.0.0

cut -d' ' is not what I want, for it's only for one single space. awk is not what I am looking for either, but how to do with 'cut'?

thanks.

Answer 1

Shorter/simpler solution: use cuts (cut on steroids I wrote)

ps axu | grep '[j]boss' | cuts 4

Note that cuts field indexes are zero-based so 5th field is specified as 4

http://arielf.github.io/cuts/

And even shorter (not using cut at all) is:

pgrep jboss

Answer 2

Personally, I tend to use awk for jobs like this. For example:

ps axu| grep jboss | grep -v grep | awk '{print $5}'

Answer 3

I still like the way Perl handles fields with white space.
First field is $F[0].

$ ps axu | grep dbus | perl -lane 'print $F[4]'

Answer 4

If you want to pick columns from a ps output, any reason to not use -o?

e.g.

ps ax -o pid,vsz
ps ax -o pid,cmd

Minimum column width allocated, no padding, only single space field separator.

ps ax --no-headers -o pid:1,vsz:1,cmd

3443 24600 -bash
8419 0 [xfsalloc]
8420 0 [xfs_mru_cache]
8602 489316 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
12821 497240 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
12824 497132 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

Pid and vsz given 10 char width, 1 space field separator.

ps ax --no-headers -o pid:10,vsz:10,cmd

  3443      24600 -bash
  8419          0 [xfsalloc]
  8420          0 [xfs_mru_cache]
  8602     489316 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
 12821     497240 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start
 12824     497132 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

Used in a script:-

oldpid=12824
echo "PID: ${oldpid}"
echo "Command: $(ps -ho cmd ${oldpid})"

Answer 5

One way around this is to go:

$ps axu | grep jboss | sed 's/\s\+/ /g' | cut -d' ' -f3

to replace multiple consecutive spaces with a single one.

Answer 6

As an alternative, there is always perl:

ps aux | perl -lane 'print $F[3]'

Or, if you want to get all fields starting at field #3 (as stated in one of the answers above):

ps aux | perl -lane 'print @F[3 .. scalar @F]'