Using cut to extract only last item in line?

devnulljp · 08-30-2009, 04:39 PM

Anyone know how to use cut to select the last, or second to last, or a range from the end of the line using a delimiter?
cut -d: -f 1 will pull out the first, cut -d: -f 1-3 will get 1 to 3, but only from the beginning. Is it possible to chomp away from the end?

I have lines of different lengths and all I want is the last item (so it's not possible to grab a specified field number, as sometimes the last one is field3 others it's 5 or 8 or more.

Ex.

Code:

item1:item2:item3:item4 
item1:item2
item1:item2:item3:item4:item5:item6:item7:item8

so I want line1, item4; line2,item2, line3,item8 etc.

Right now I'm munging it with a python script, but I figure cut must be able to do this more simply?

Any ideas?

lwasserm · 08-30-2009, 05:33 PM

Well, this is perhaps not very pretty but here is one way:

Code:

$ echo one two three four five six seven|rev|cut -d' ' -f1|rev
seven
$

colucix · 08-30-2009, 05:58 PM

Another method using awk:

Code:

awk -F: '{print $NF}' file