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

Answer 1

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