sed + cut line before “;” seperator

Question

how to perform by sed in order to print the line until ";" character

    echo "NUMBER   =   3247  FULL DUPLEX ; speed=343 434 " | sed .....

need the following output

NUMBER = 3247 FULL DUPLEX

Answer 1

Why don't you use awk for this? i.e.

echo "Number=3247 ; speed=343 434 " | awk {'print $1'}

And if you really need the " in front, use

echo "Number=3247 ; speed=343 434 " | awk {'print "\"" $1'}

EDIT: After feedback (see comments below), here the correct version with sed:

echo "NUMBER = 3247 FULL DUPLEX ; speed=343 434 " | sed 's/\;.*//g'

Answer 2

Use awk with -F to specify the field delimiter:

echo "NUMBER   =   3247  FULL DUPLEX ; speed=343 434 " | awk -F\; '{print $1;}'

Note that the semicolon is excaped with a backslash so that your shell won't misinterpret the semicolon as the end of the command.