UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have a file similar to the following
filler filler filler
car 6 mazda
filler filler filler filler
car civic honda
car rav 4 toyota
filler filler

If i do a "grep -i car file.txt" the output would be
car 6 mazda
car civic honda
car rav 4 toyota

however, i want to have the first 9 characters of each line. I know that sort has a similar feature with +n, but I was wondering if i can do something similar to just get the following output:
car 6
car civic
car rav 4

I played with the cut command, the the field delimiter doesn't seem to work (since rav 4 contains a space).

It is:

Code:

car 6 maz
car civic
car rav 4

So what do you really want?

Code:

| cut -b-9

No need for delimiters if Youre writing bytes (chars).

Code:

 
$ nawk '/[Cc]ar/ {print substr($0,1,9)}' file.txt
car 6 maz
car civic
car rav 4

simple solution and worked like charm!