XK0-006 System Management Practice Question
An administrator wants to display only the second field from a colon-delimited file named 'passwd' using a text processing tool. Which command will achieve this?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
awk -F: '{print $2}' passwd
awk -F: '{print $2}' passwd sets field separator to : and prints second field. cut -d: -f2 also works, but the options include awk. sed is for editing, not field extraction; grep is for pattern matching.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
sed 's/:.*//' passwd
Why it's wrong here
Removes everything after first colon, not print second field.
- ✓
awk -F: '{print $2}' passwd
Why this is correct
Correct: awk sets delimiter and prints field 2.
- ✗
cut -d: -f2 passwd
Why it's wrong here
cut -d: -f2 is not the correct answer because while it can extract the second field, the question tests knowledge of awk, which is the standard text processing tool for field extraction in Linux+ exams.
- ✗
grep -o '^[^:]*:[^:]*' passwd
Why it's wrong here
Prints first two fields, not just second.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 979 original XK0-006 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This XK0-006 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the XK0-006 exam.