Why does awk always print full lines?

Question

When attempting to use awk to get the process ID from the output of ps aux like so:

ps aux | awk "{ print $2 }"

No matter what number of row I attempt to print, awk always outputs the full line. I've never managed to get it to work properly. I'm using macOS which apparently uses a different type/version of awk, but I can't find an alternative syntax which might work.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

See https://mywiki.wooledge.org/Quotes – Ed Morton Dec 11 '19 at 17:52 — Ed Morton, Dec 11 '19 at 17:52

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 11 '19 at 10:29

1

ps aux | awk '{ print $2 }'

Try that one

answered Dec 11 '19 at 10:29

DevMops

101
1
8

You might need to add a "-" in front of the ps command line options: ps -aux | ... – ennox Dec 11 '19 at 12:12

Why does awk always print full lines?

1 Answers1