To print the last field in a file called testfile, you would use the awk command like this:
awk ‘{print $NF}’ testfile
If you wanted to print fields 1 and 3 in a colon delimited file like the Unix /etc/passwd, you coud use this command:
awk -F”:” ‘{print $1, $3}’ /etc/passwd
You can also make it print a little bit cleaner by setting the column width:
awk -F”:” ‘{printf (“%-10s %-40s\n”), $1, $3}’ /etc/passwd
You can also search and print specific lines:
awk ‘/^foo/{print $1, $2}’ /path/to/file
The command above will search for lines that begin with foo and then print fields 1 and 2.
