How to split a string in shell and get the last field

Question

Suppose I have the string 1 2 3 4 5 and I want to get its last field  5 in this case   How do I do that using Bash  I tried cut  but I don t know how to specify the last field with -f

User · Answer

One way   var1  1 2 3 4 5  var2   var1        Another  using an array   var1  1 2 3 4 5  saveIFS  IFS IFS     var2   var1  IFS  saveIFS var2   var2     -1    Yet another with an array   var1  1 2 3 4 5  saveIFS  IFS IFS     var2   var1  IFS  saveIFS count    var2     var2   var2  count-1     Using Bash  version    3 2  regular expressions   var1  1 2 3 4 5      var1                 var2   BASH REMATCH 1

User · Answer

A solution using the read builtin   IFS     read -a fields  lt  lt  lt   1 2 3 4 5  echo    fields 4      Or  to make it more generic   echo    fields -1      prints the last item

User · Answer

Using sed     echo  1 2 3 4 5    sed  s            gt  5    echo      sed  s            gt   empty     echo       sed  s            gt   empty    echo   b    sed  s            gt  b   echo    c    sed  s            gt  c    echo  a    sed  s            gt  a   echo  a     sed  s            gt   empty    echo  a b    sed  s            gt  b   echo  a  c    sed  s            gt  c

User · Answer

Using Bash     var1  1 2 3 4 0    IFS       set --  var1   eval echo         0

User · Answer

You can use string operators     foo 1 2 3 4 5   echo   foo      5   This trims everything from the front until a      greedily     foo   lt -- from variable foo         lt -- greedy front trim         lt -- matches anything         lt -- until the last

User · Answer

for x in  echo  str   tr       n    do echo  x  done

User · Answer

Assuming fairly simple usage  no escaping of the delimiter  for example   you can use grep     echo  1 2 3 4 5    grep -oE          5   Breakdown - find all the characters not the delimiter        at the end of the line       -o only prints the matching part

User · Answer

If you like python and have an option to install a package  you can use this python utility     install pythonp pythonp -m pip install pythonp  echo  1 2 3 4 5    pythonp  l split      -1   5

User · Answer

For those that comfortable with Python  https   github com Russell91 pythonpy is a nice choice to solve this problem    echo  quot a b c d e quot    py -x  x split  quot   quot   -1    From the pythonpy help  -x  treat each row of stdin as x  With that tool  it is easy to write python code that gets applied to the input  Edit  Dec 2020   Pythonpy is no longer online  Here is an alternative    echo  quot a b c d e quot    python -c  import sys  sys stdout write sys stdin read   split  quot   quot   -1     it contains more boilerplate code  i e  sys stdout read write  but requires only std libraries from python

User · Answer

Regex matching in sed is greedy  always goes to the last occurrence   which you can use to your advantage here     foo 1 2 3 4 5   echo   foo    sed  s        5

User · Answer

echo  a b c d e  xargs -d   -n1 tail -1   First use xargs split it using     -n1 means every line only have one part Then pring the last part

User · Answer

There are many good answers here  but still I want to share this one using basename     basename   echo  a b c d e    tr            However it will fail if there are already some     in your string   If slash   is your delimiter then you just have to  and should  use basename    It s not the best answer but it just shows how you can be creative using bash commands

User · Answer

Another way is to reverse before and after cut     echo ab cd ef   rev   cut -d  -f1   rev ef   This makes it very easy to get the last but one field  or any range of fields numbered from the end

User · Answer

It s difficult to get the last field using cut  but here are some solutions in awk and perl   echo 1 2 3 4 5   awk -F    print  NF   echo 1 2 3 4 5   perl -F  -wane  print  F -1

User · Answer

You could try something like this if you want to use cut  echo  quot 1 2 3 4 5 quot    cut -d  quot   quot  -f5  You can also use grep try like this   echo  quot  1 2 3 4 5 quot    grep -o

User · Answer

echo  a b c d e    tr       n    tail -1 e   Simply translate the delimiter into a newline and choose the last entry with tail -1

User · Answer

If your last field is a single character  you could do this   a  1 2 3 4 5   echo   a  -1  echo   a  -1     Check string manipulation in bash

[bash] How to split a string in shell and get the last field

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