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Full Discussion: Extract X words from end of line, minus last keynumber X
Top Forums Shell Programming and Scripting Extract X words from end of line, minus last keynumber X Post 302466213 by fubaya on Tuesday 26th of October 2010 01:14:09 AM
Old 10-26-2010
Extract X words from end of line, minus last keynumber X
The file contains one line of text followed by a number. I want to take the number X at the end, take it out and display the last X words. X is the key telling me how many words from the end that I want and X will always be less than the number of words, so no problem there.

Example input and desired output:

input: this is the file with the text 1
output: text

input: this is the file with the text 2
output: the text

input: this is the file with the text 3
output: with the text

input: this is the file with the text 4
output: file with the text

I can do this with shell and sed, but it's not elegant and there has to be a simpler solution. awk print column would be simple, except I need to go from the right side of the line instead of the left.

My quick solution, without getting into arithmetic, is to use tr to change spaces to newlines, tail -1 to extract the number, sed to get rid of the last line, then tr to change newlines back to spaces. It works fine, but now I think this will become a permanent part of the script and it's just too ugly and I'm just too braindead to figure out something different.
 

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LEARN ABOUT HPUX

fmt

fmt(1)							      General Commands Manual							    fmt(1)

NAME

       fmt - format text

SYNOPSIS

       width] [file...]

DESCRIPTION

       The  command is a simple text formatter that fills and joins lines to produce output lines of (up to) the number of characters specified in
       the width option.  The default width is 72.  concatenates the arguments.  If none are given, formats text from the standard input.

       Blank lines are preserved in the output, as is the spacing between words.  does not fill lines beginning with a	period	for  compatibility
       with Nor does it fill lines starting with

       Indentation is preserved in the output and input lines with differing indentation are not joined (unless is used).

       can also be used as an in-line text filter for the command:

       reformats the text between the cursor location and the end of the paragraph.

   Options
       recognizes the following options:

	      Crown margin mode.
		    Preserve the indentation of the first two lines within a paragraph and align the left margin of each subsequent line with that
		    of the second line.  This is useful for tagged paragraphs.

	      Split lines only.
		    Do not join short lines to form longer ones.  This prevents sample lines of code, and other such "formatted" text, from  being
		    unduly combined.

	      Fill output lines to up to
		    width columns.

WARNINGS

       The width option is acceptable for BSD compatibility, but it may go away in future releases.

SEE ALSO

       nroff(1), vi(1).

																	    fmt(1)
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