If the data is in a variable as in:

Code:

var=bblah1_blah2_blah3_blah4_blah5

you can get the last field with:

Code:

last=${var##*_}

and the next to the last field with:

Code:

tmp=${var%_*}
second_last=${tmp##*_}

and to see the results:

Code:

printf '%s\n' "$second_last" "$last"

which with var set as shown above will print:

Code:

blah4
blah5

P.S.: I hadn't seen your last post (post #3) when I originally posted this and didn't know what OS you are using. The above suggestion will work with /usr/xpg4/bin/sh, ksh, or bash; but not /bin/sh on Solaris 10 systems. This will work with any shell that conforms to the POSIX standards. If some of your old systems were built before 1993, you may need to use expr to split substrings out of your variables unless you know how many underscores appear in your variables before you start splitting out fields from them.