UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Can someone please help me with how to extract the last word on a line to a new file? I have a list of names like:

Ms. Nell D. Bullock
Mrs. Sherrie M Avent
LINDA ANNETTE RUSSELL
Mr. Jerome R. Harris
Pandora Tyndall

I want the new file to look like this:
Bullock
Avent
RUSSELL
Harris
Tyndall

Thanks for any help.

Try:
sed 's/[a-zA-Z]* //g' < inputfile

The filename is names: I tried.
sed 's/[a-zA-Z]* //g' < names

and got:

D.Bullock
Ham
Mrs.Avent
RUSSELL
Mr.R.Harris
Tyndall
Ms.D.Alamo

Not exactly... but I think I can fiddle with it from here.
What does //g do in the command above?

I got it...! I needed to remove the dots/periods first.
How could I have done this in one command?

sed 's/[.]//g' < names > names3
sed 's/[a-zA-Z]* //g' < names3 >names4

Dang! I forgot about the periods. Try:

sed 's/[.a-zA-Z]* //g' < inputfile

Thanks so much!

Another handy way to get the last field per line in a file is to use awk.


awk '{ print $NF }' < filename > newfile

or

awk '{ print $1, $NF }' < filename > newfile

This will print field one and the last field as well.