$ printf " one two  three"  | tr -s ' ' | cut -d ' ' -f 1

  $ printf " one two  three"  | awk '{print $1}'
  one

  ps ax | sed 's/^\s\+//; s/\s\+/ /g;' | cut -d ' ' -f 4

  echo -e '1\t2\t3\t4\t5' | expand -t 1 | cut -d ' ' -f 3