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Find and delete part of field with awk or sed

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# 1  
Old 01-31-2014
Find and delete part of field with awk or sed
I've got a file that looks like this (the whitespace between commas is intentional):

Code:
123456789,12,JOHN H DOE             ,DOE/JOHN H             ,,,DOE/JOHN H      ,,,,,123 FAKE STREET  ,SPRINGFIELD,XX,

I want to strip just the first name out of the third field so it reads "JOHN,". So far I have
Code:
awk -F ',' '{ print $3 }' FILENAM1 | awk '{ print $1 }' >FILENAM2

That strips the first name but also the rest of the file. I want the reverse: delete only what comes after the first name and keep everything else. Thanks in advance!
# 2  
Old 01-31-2014
I'm not sure if I understood your requirement. Can you also post what is the expected output for below input:
Code:
123456789,12,JOHN H DOE             ,DOE/JOHN H             ,,,DOE/JOHN H      ,,,,,123 FAKE STREET  ,SPRINGFIELD,XX,

# 3  
Old 01-31-2014
Sure. Sorry for the lack of clarity. Here is what I want the line to look like:
Code:
123456789,12,JOHN,DOE/JOHN H             ,,,DOE/JOHN H      ,,,,,123 FAKE STREET  ,SPRINGFIELD,XX,

Thanks!
# 4  
Old 01-31-2014
Code:
awk -F, '{sub(/ .*/,x,$3)}1' OFS=, file

This User Gave Thanks to Yoda For This Post:
Scottie1954
# 5  
Old 01-31-2014
Thank you, Jedi Master. That worked perfectly. And now if you will permit a follow up question, how would I strip the next field so it keeps only the name up to the / ?.

I want my output to look like this:
Code:
123456789,12,JOHN,DOE,,,DOE/JOHN H      ,,,,,123 FAKE STREET  ,SPRINGFIELD,XX,

# 6  
Old 01-31-2014
Just use sub function on 4th field as well:
Code:
awk -F, '{sub(/ .*/,x,$3);sub(/\/.*/,x,$4)}1' OFS=, file

# 7  
Old 01-31-2014
Thanks again! I wasn't escaping the slash properly. And I didn't know I could string two awk functions together with a ; so you've properly schooled me today.
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