Text Processing (Grep/Sed/Awk)

Stop picking columns by counting spaces

🧩 The Challenge

You know that feeling when you’re trying to pull a specific PID or interface name out of a command, but the column alignment shifts depending on the system load or the length of the process name? I’ve spent way too long counting spaces in columns while staring at `ps` output only to have the script break ten minutes later.

💡 The Fix

Start using AWK field separators instead of relying on fixed positions. It lets you treat those messy white-space outputs like a real database.

ps aux | awk 'NR>1 {print $2, $11}'

⚙️ Why It Works

Setting the default behavior allows AWK to treat any run of whitespace as a single delimiter. By ignoring the header line with NR>1, you grab exactly what you need without caring if the username field decided to get extra long that day.

🚀 Pro-Tip: Use -F if your data is actually delimited by commas or colons instead of spaces.

Linux Tips & Tricks | © ngelinux.com | 11/9/2026