Question

hi have in file the example line: (in file)

PATH: word1 /var/tmp word2 word3

how to rescue or match only “/var/tmp” PATH from the line by sed

remark: /var/tmp its only example , it could be any other path!

remark1: /var/tmp could be in the first line or in the end of the line or somewhere in the middle of line

for example

 echo "PATH: word1 /var/tmp word2 word3" | sed ...

will print

/var/tmp

Answer 1

$ cat file
PATH: word1 /var/tmp word2 word3
$ awk '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++)if($i ~/\//) print $i}' file
/var/tmp

This does not work if you have directory names with spaces. Provide a more concrete example of the possible paths that you might have. best of all, tackle the root of the problem at the source, where you got your data from.