cut -f (or awk alternative) - Shell Programming and Scripting

gefa · #1 (**permalink**) 03-01-2005

I'm trying the following as i wish to get the last field in a report containing several fields, each line can have more fields than the previous, so I tried

rvwords=`echo $rvstatus |wc -w`
rvstat=`echo $rvstatus |cut -f $rvwords`

but it prints the whole variable contents of $rvstatus rather than just the seventh field, there are no delimeters (other than spaces / tabs) in the line, which would read along the lines of

0 1111 my file 102.00 1003.00 2.99
1 2222 my own file 111.00 112.98 200.10
...

Thanks in anticipation

vgersh99 · #2 (**permalink**) 03-01-2005

rvstat=`echo $rvstatus | nawk '{print $NF}'`

or with sed:

rvstat=`echo $rvstatus | sed -e 's/.* $[^ ][^ ]*$[ ]*$/\1/'`

bhargav · #3 (**permalink**) 03-01-2005

Try this ....

Code:

$ echo "0 1111 my file 102.00 1003.00 2.99" | cut -d" " -f 7
2.99

Try this if we have more than a one embedded space between the fields

Code:

$ echo "0 1111 my file 102.00 1003.00 2.99" | tr -s " " | cut -d" " -f 7
2.99

muthukumar · #4 (**permalink**) 03-02-2005

Try as with awk as,

Code:

awk ' { print $NF }' <filename>

or 

sed 's/.*[ ]\(.*\)$/\1/' <filename>

IT will do too.

gefa · #5 (**permalink**) 03-02-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by vgersh99

rvstat=`echo $rvstatus | nawk '{print $NF}'`

or with sed:

rvstat=`echo $rvstatus | sed -e 's/.* $[^ ][^ ]*$[ ]*$/\1/'`

Thanks the awk method works fine, however this now raises another issue, how about if I now wanted to print the field fourth and/or fifth from the right ?

vgersh99 · #6 (**permalink**) 03-02-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by gefa

Thanks the awk method works fine, however this now raises another issue, how about if I now wanted to print the field fourth and/or fifth from the right ?

Code:

# 4th AND 5th from last
rvstat=`echo $rvstatus | nawk '{print $(NF-4), $(NF-5)}'`

# 4th from last
rvstat=`echo $rvstatus | nawk '{print $(NF-4)}'`

gefa · #7 (**permalink**) 03-02-2005

Quote:

Originally Posted by vgersh99

Code:

# 4th AND 5th from last
rvstat=`echo $rvstatus | nawk '{print $(NF-4), $(NF-5)}'`

# 4th from last
rvstat=`echo $rvstatus | nawk '{print $(NF-4)}'`

Thanks again, that works as required, I had tried something similar but missed off the brackets !.

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