Awk: Remove everything after the first word in each line

 

Another awk question. How to remove everything after the first word in each line? E.g., if we wanted to remove everything but the names in this input (FILENAME.txt):

 

Anna 123 09123 Main Street

Bob 109 09800 Smith Street

Joe 0981 123123 King Street

 

We can use awk like so:

 

awk ‘{ print $1 }’

 

e.g.:

 

cat FILENAME.txt | awk ‘{ print $1 }’

 

which will print:

 

Anna

Bob

Joe

 

Short and sweet.