Dear Scripting experts,

I have a problem which i cannot get my head around and wondered if anyone can help me. I have two files "file1" and "file2" and i want to replace column one from file 1 with column one with file2.(where file two has many columns). see example.. ive tried to use cut and paste but got myslef in a mess...

file1 file2
1 9 66 8 A
2 8 3 9 B
3 66 4 25 C
4 66 2 6 D
7 4 3 3 E
5 4 5 45 F

Output:-
1 66 8 A
2 3 9 B
3 4 25 C
4 2 6 D
7 3 3 E
5 5 45 F

Is there an easy way i can do this in awk? ideally i would like to have a one liner which i could invoke using the system command in a perl script.

Thanks


Mish