Split a text file based on delimiter using linux command line

Question

I have a file with the following lines of text:

jeremy , thomas , 123 
peter , paul , 456 
jack , jill , 789

I would like to remove all of the data except for the center item. For example ending up with a file which contains:

thomas
paul
jill

I have tried so many awk patterns my brain is exploding. Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Try awk:

awk -F '[[:space:]]*,[[:space:]]*' '{print $2}' input.txt

Answer 2

Try this

cat <filepath> | tr -d ' ' | cut -d',' -f2