Using awk to print all columns from the nth to the last

Question

This line worked until I had whitespace in the second field   svn status   grep        gawk   print  2     gt  removedProjs   is there a way to have awk print everything in  2 or greater     3   4   until we don t have anymore columns    I suppose I should add that I m doing this in a Windows environment with Cygwin

User · Answer

This is what I preferred from all the recommendations:

Printing from the 6th to last column.

ls -lthr | awk '{out=$6; for(i=7;i<=NF;i++){out=out" "$i}; print out}'

or

ls -lthr | awk '{ORS=" "; for(i=6;i<=NF;i++) print $i;print "\n"}'

User · Answer

awk   out  2  for i 3 i lt  NF i    out out    i   print out     My answer is based on the one of VeeArr  but I noticed it started with a white space before it would print the second column  and the rest   As I only have 1 reputation point  I can t comment on it  so here it goes as a new answer   start with  out  as the second column and then add all the other columns  if they exist   This goes well as long as there is a second column

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Perl    m  ls -ltr dir   grep  d   awk   print   6   7   8   9     foreach  i   m            print   i n

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This was irritating me so much  I sat down and wrote a cut-like field specification parser  tested with GNU Awk 3 1 7    First  create a new Awk library script called pfcut  with e g   sudo nano  usr share awk pfcut   Then  paste in the script below  and save  After that  this is how the usage looks like     echo  t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7    awk -f pfcut --source        pfcut  -4       t1 t2 t3 t4    echo  t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7    awk -f pfcut --source        pfcut  2-       t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7    echo  t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7    awk -f pfcut --source        pfcut  -2 4 6-       t1 t2 t4 t6 t7   To avoid typing all that  I guess the best one can do  see otherwise Automatically load a user function at startup with awk  - Unix  amp  Linux Stack Exchange  is add an alias to    bashrc  e g  with     echo  alias awk-pfcut  awk -f pfcut --source    gt  gt     bashrc   source    bashrc       refresh bash aliases       then you can just call     echo  t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6 t7    awk-pfcut        pfcut  -2 4 6-       t1 t2 t4 t6 t7   Here is the source of the pfcut script     pfcut - print fields like cut     sdaau  GNU GPL   Nov  2013  function spfcut formatstring        parse format string   numsplitscomma   split formatstring  fsa          numspecparts   0    split     parts     clear initialize array  for e g   tail  piping into  awk     for i 1 i lt  numsplitscomma i          commapart fsa i       numsplitsminus   split fsa i   cpa   -          assume here a range is always just two parts   a-b        also assume user has already sorted the ranges      print numsplitsminus  cpa 1   cpa 2     debug     if numsplitsminus  2         if   cpa 1          cpa 1    1       if   cpa 2          cpa 2    NF       for j cpa 1  j lt  cpa 2  j             parts numspecparts      j               else parts numspecparts      commapart        n asort parts   outs       for i 1 i lt  n i          outs   outs sprintf   s s    parts i    i  n     OFS         print i  parts i      debug       return outs     function pfcut formatstring      print spfcut formatstring

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Printing out columns starting from  2  the output will have no trailing space in the beginning    ls -l   awk   sub                print  0

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Most solutions with awk leave an space  The options here avoid that problem   Option 1  A simple cut solution  works only with single delimiters    command   cut -d    -f3-   Option 2  Forcing an awk re-calc sometimes remove the added leading space  OFS  left by removing the first fields  works with some versions of awk    command   awk     1  2     0  0   NF NF    Option 3  Printing each field formatted with printf will give more control     in      1    2  3     4   5   6 7     8      echo   in  awk -v n 2    for i n 1 i lt  NF i    printf   s s   i i  NF RS OFS     3 4 5 6 7 8   However  all previous answers change all repeated FS  between fields to OFS  Let s build a couple of option that do not do that   Option 4  recommended   A loop with sub to remove fields and delimiters at the front  And using the value of FS instead of space  which could be changed   Is more portable  and doesn t trigger a change of FS to OFS  NOTE  The   FS   is to accept an input with leading spaces     in      1    2  3     4   5   6 7     8      echo   in    awk    n 2  a     FS      FS     FS        for i 1 i lt  n i    sub  a         0     1   3     4   5   6 7     8   Option 5  It is quite possible to build a solution that does not add extra  leading or trailing  whitespace  and preserve existing whitespace s  using the function gensub from GNU awk  as this     echo      1    2  3     4   5   6 7     8        awk -v n 2  BEGIN  a     FS      b      FS     FS       c    n                   print gensub a  b  c    1       3     4   5   6 7     8    It also may be used to swap a group of fields given a count n     echo      1    2  3     4   5   6 7     8        awk -v n 2  BEGIN  a     FS      b      FS     FS       c    n                               d gensub a  b  c    1               e gensub        d    1  1  0               print    d       e                    3     4   5   6 7     8         1    2      Of course  in such case  the OFS is used to separate both parts of the line  and the trailing white space of the fields is still printed   NOTE   FS   is used to allow leading spaces in the input line

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If you need specific columns printed with arbitrary delimeter   awk   print  3       4        col 3  col 4   awk   print  3  anything   4        col 3anythingcol 4   So if you have whitespace in a column it will be two columns  but you can connect it with any delimiter or without it

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This would work if you are using Bash and you could use as many  x   as elements you wish to discard and it ignores multiple spaces if they are not escaped   while read x b  do echo   b   done  lt  filename

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This awk function returns substring of  0 that includes fields from begin to end   function fields begin  end     b  e  p  i        b   0  e   0  p   0      for  i   1  i  lt   NF    i            if  begin    i    b   p            p    length  i           e   p          if  end    i    break            p    length FS             return substr  0  b   1  e - b       To get everything starting from field 3   tail   fields 3     To get section of  0 that covers fields 3 to 5   middle   fields 3  5     b  e  p  i nonsense in function parameter list is just an awk way of declaring local variables

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There s a duplicate question with a simpler answer using cut    svn status    grep        cut -d   -f2-   -d specifies the delimeter  space   -f specifies the list of columns  all starting with the 2nd

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Perl solution   perl -lane  splice  F 0 1  print join      F  file   These command-line options are used    -n loop around every line of the input file  do not automatically print every line -l removes newlines before processing  and adds them back in afterwards -a autosplit mode     split input lines into the  F array   Defaults to splitting on whitespace -e execute the perl code   splice  F 0 1 cleanly removes column 0 from the  F array  join      F joins the elements of the  F array  using a space in-between each element    Python solution   python -c  import sys  sys stdout write     join line split   1        n   for line in sys stdin    lt  file

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I personally tried all the answers mentioned above  but most of them were a bit complex or just not right  The easiest way to do it from my point of view is   awk -F       for  i 4  i lt  NF  i    print  i       Where   -F     defines the delimiter for awk to use  In my case is the whitespace  which is also the default delimiter for awk  This means that -F    can be ignored  Where  NF  defines the total number of fields columns  Therefore the loop will begin from the 4th field up to the last field column  Where    N  retrieves the value of the Nth field  Therefore   print  i   will print the current field column based based on the loop count

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If you don t want to reformat the part of the line that you don t chop off  the best solution I can think of is written in my answer in   How to print all the columns after a particular number using awk   It  chops what is before the given field number N  and prints all the rest of the line  including field number N and maintaining the original spacing  it does not reformat   It doesn t mater if the string of the field appears also somewhere else in the line   Define a function   fromField       awk -v m   x01  -v N   1     N m N  print substr  0 index  0 m  1        And use it like this     echo    bat   bi       iru   lau bost       fromField 3 iru   lau bost      echo    bat   bi       iru   lau bost       fromField 2 bi       iru   lau bost    Output maintains everything  including trailing spaces  In you particular case   svn status   grep        fromField 2  gt  removedProjs   If your file stream does not contain new-line characters in the middle of the lines  you could be using a different Record Separator   you can use   awk -v m   x0a  -v N  3     N m N  print substr  0  index  0 m  1      The first case will fail only in files streams that contain the rare hexadecimal char number 1

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Would this work   awk   print substr  0 length  1  1      lt  file   It leaves some whitespace in front though

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Because of a wrong most upvoted anwser with 340 votes  I just lost 5 minutes of my life  Did anybody try this answer out before upvoting this  Apparantly not  Completely useless    I have a log where after  5 with an IP address can be more text or no text  I need everything from the IP address to the end of the line should there be anything after  5  In my case  this is actualy withn an awk program  not an awk oneliner so awk must solve the problem  When I try to remove the first 4 fields using the most upvoted but completely wrong answer   echo    7 27 10 16  Thu 11 57 18 37 244 182 218    awk    1  2  3  4     printf    s  n    0     it spits out wrong and useless response  I added      to demonstrate         37 244 182 218 one two three    There are even some sugestions to combine substr with this wrong answer  Like that complication is an improvement    Instead  if columns are fixed width until the cut point and awk is needed  the correct answer is   echo    7 27 10 16  Thu 11 57 18 37 244 182 218    awk   printf    s  n   substr  0 28      which produces the desired output    37 244 182 218 one two three

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I wasn t happy with any of the awk solutions presented here because I wanted to extract the first few columns and then print the rest  so I turned to perl instead  The following code extracts the first two columns  and displays the rest as is   echo -e  a  b  c  d te t tf g        perl -ne  my  f   split   s        3  printf  first   s second   s rest   s    f     The advantage compared to the perl solution from Chris Koknat is that really only the first n elements are split off from the input string  the rest of the string isn t split at all and therefor stays completely intact  My example demonstrates this with a mix of spaces and tabs   To change the amount of columns that should be extracted  replace the 3 in the example with n 1

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echo  1 2 3 4 5 6    awk     NF       print  0     this one uses awk to print all except the last field

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If you want formatted text  chain your commands with echo and use  0 to print the last field   Example   for i in  8  11   do    s1   i     s2  str i     s3  str with spaces  i     echo -n   s1  s2    awk   printf    3d  6s   1  2      echo -en   s3    awk   printf    -19s  n    0   done   Prints      8   str8 str with spaces 8       9   str9 str with spaces 9      10  str10 str with spaces 10     11  str11 str with spaces 11

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ls -la   awk   o  1    3  for  i 5  i lt  NF  i    o o    i  print o      from this answer is not bad but the natural spacing is gone  Please then compare it to this one    ls -la   cut -d   -f4-   Then you d see the difference     Even ls -la   awk    1  2     print   which is based on the answer voted best thus far is not preserve the formatting     Thus I would use the following  and it also allows explicit selective columns in the beginning    ls -la   cut -d   -f1 4-   Note that every space counts for columns too  so for instance in the below  columns 1 and 3 are empty  2 is INFO and 4 is     echo   INFO  2014-10-11 10 16 19  main     cut -d   -f1 3    echo   INFO  2014-10-11 10 16 19  main     cut -d   -f2 4 INFO 2014-10-11

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I want to extend the proposed answers to the situation where fields are delimited by possibly several whitespaces    the reason why the OP is not using cut I suppose   I know the OP asked about awk  but a sed approach would work here  example with printing columns from the 5th to the last     pure sed approach  sed -r  s   s   S  s   4     somefile   Explanation    s    is used the standard way to perform substitution   s  matches any consecutive whitespace at the beginning of the line  S  s  means a column of data  non-whitespace chars followed by whitespace chars     4  means the pattern is repeated 4 times   sed and cut  sed -r  s   s     s  s   t g  somefile   cut -f5-   by just replacing consecutive whitespaces by a single tab  tr and cut  tr can also be used to squeeze consecutive characters with the -s option   tr -s   blank    lt somefile   cut -d    -f5-

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awk    for i 3  i lt  NF    i  printf  i  FS  print         lauhub proposed this correct  simple and fast solution here

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Awk examples looks complex here  here is simple Bash shell syntax   command   while read -a cols  do echo   cols    1   done   Where 1 is your nth column counting from 0     Example  Given this content of file  in txt    c1 c1 c2 c1 c2 c3 c1 c2 c3 c4 c1 c2 c3 c4 c5   here is the output     while read -a cols  do echo   cols    1   done  lt  in txt   c2 c2 c3 c2 c3 c4 c2 c3 c4 c5

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will print all but very first column   awk    1     print  0   somefile   will print all but two first columns   awk    1  2     print  0   somefile

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You could use a for-loop to loop through printing fields  2 through  NF  built-in variable that represents the number of fields on the line    Edit  Since  print  appends a newline  you ll want to buffer the results   awk   out     for i 2 i lt  NF i    out out    i   print out     Alternatively  use printf   awk   for i 2 i lt  NF i    printf   s     i   printf   n

[linux] Using awk to print all columns from the nth to the last

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