Parsing the first column of a csv file to a new file

Your last option works perfectly for me:

$ cat > in.csv  # Then pasted the example input followed by Ctrl+D:
EXAMPLEfoo,60,6
EXAMPLEbar,30,6
EXAMPLE1,60,3
EXAMPLE2,120,6
EXAMPLE3,60,6
EXAMPLE4,30,6
[Ctrl+D]
$ cat in.csv | cut -d, -f1
EXAMPLEfoo
EXAMPLEbar
EXAMPLE1
EXAMPLE2
EXAMPLE3
EXAMPLE4

Maybe line endings are biting you here? If the file has DOS-style or even old-Mac-style line endings, this might cause strange behaviour. Try running file in.csv and see what it comes up with.

$ file in.unix.csv
in.unix.csv: ASCII text
$ file in.dos.csv
in.dos.csv: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators

If the latter is your situation, use the dos2unix tool to convert the file.

Edit: On OS X, it seems flip is what you want.