Remove blank line from awk output

Question

I am trying to remove leading whitespace from awk output. When I use this command, a leading whitespace is displayed.

diff  test1.txt test.txt | awk '{print $2}'

output: 

asdfasdf.txt
test.txt
weqtwqe.txt

How can I remove the leading whitespace using awk?

Thanks in advance

`awk '{print $2}'` shouldn't print any whitespace, if you haven't changed the field separator. — user000001, Sep 25 '15 at 19:10
`awk '$2{print $2}'` may be ..... it is not clear what you want .... print if $2 exists ... `awk '$2!=""{print $2}'` better — Jose Ricardo Bustos M., Sep 25 '15 at 19:12
do you mean the blank line at the top of your output? If so, please edit your question to indicate that (DON'T reply here). Good luck. — shellter, Sep 25 '15 at 19:17
@JoseRicardoBustosM. Ricardo Bustos M. That was exactly what I needed. Thanks for your help. That removed the leading whitespace from the output. — Gautam, Sep 25 '15 at 19:18
Hopefully by `That` you mean `awk '$2!=""{print $2}'` and not `awk '$2{print $2}'` as the latter will fail when `$2` contains a value that evaluates numerically to zero. — Ed Morton, Sep 25 '15 at 19:20

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 25 '15 at 19:59

1

if you want to print the lines where $2 exists you can do it conditionally on number of fields

awk 'NF>1{print $2}'

will do.

answered Sep 25 '15 at 19:59

karakfa

1 Answers1