perl -lane'print $F[0]' FILE
[download]

You guys, I'm not sure '-a' is quite equivalent to the awk fields. I'm no good at awk, but I believe it splits on m/\s+/ rather than \s. perlrun says '-a' is this:

while (<>) {
 @F = split(' ');
 print pop(@F), "\n";
}
[download]

But I think you'd have to @F = grep {$_} @F or change the split or something.

no?

(Also, I think elan should work. I mean, I know it doesn't, but isn't there some posix-y arg processing style where if 'a' and 'b' take arguments "-dacbe aarg barg" still works? Perhaps I imagined that.)

UPDATE: oh, jstrom, I did *not* know that... I assumed split splooged any argument into a regex.

-Paul

From perlfunc's entry on split:

As a special case, specifying a PATTERN of space (' ') will split on white space just as split with no arguments does. Thus, split(' ') can be used to emulate awk's default behavior, whereas split(/ /) will give you as many null initial fields as there are leading spaces. A split on /\s+/ is like a split(' ') except that any leading whitespace produces a null first field. A split with no arguments really does a split(' ', $_) internally.

(Also, I think elan should work. I mean, I know it doesn't, but isn't there some posix-y arg processing style where if 'a' and 'b' take arguments "-dacbe aarg barg" still works? Perhaps I imagined that.)

If so, perl doesn't use such a style. But perl does allow bundling -l even though it takes an octal argument, so long as the switch after it doesn't look like an octal number.
--
CollegeGear.com - more than just college gear (though, yes, we have college-branded teddy bears)