Unable to filter the first row in terminal by AWK

Question

I tried the following code unsuccessfully after using ls -1

awk -F '\n' '{ print $1 }'

How can I get the first row in terminal?

Answer 1

head -n 1

Might be easier.

If you insist on awk, do

awk 'NR == 1 { print }'

Answer 2

awk '{print $0 ; exit(0); }'

I agree that head -1 is easier.

Other option:

sed q file