i have a file in which data is like this

12 34 56 78
78 56 34 12

now i want to cut 2nd last column....

if 2nd column from start is to be cut then i can write

cut -d" " -f2 filename

what to do if 2nd column from end is to be cut !

any help

thanks
Sidhu

Do you have to use cut? awk will work very well here.

echo "12 34 56 78
78 56 34 12" | awk '{print $(NF-1)}'

is there any way we can do it with cut ?

also with awk if i need to read from file then how m going to do it...couldnt get a clue...actually touching linux after long time

try this

cat file_name | awk '{print $(NF-1)}'

thanks
it is perfect !