UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I am trying to edit each line in a file. The file has several columns delimitted by '|'.
I need to take out the last two columns.
Each line starts with a unique word through which I am storing the lines in a variable and cutting the last two colums.
But, when I am echoing the line, it is printing each word of the line independently instead of the whole line.

The idea is to take off the last two columns and put back the file.

Please advise

Thanks
Chiru

Code:

 awk '/^uniqword/{$0=$(NF-1)"|"$NF;print}' file

Code:

sed 's/\(.*\)|\(.*\)|\(.*\)/\1/'  filename