Print second last column/field in awk

Question

I want to print the second last column or field in awk. The number of fields is variable. I know that I should be able to use $NF but not sure how it can be use

Answer 1

Perl solution similar to Chris Kannon's awk solution:

perl -lane 'print $F[$#F-1]' 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

The @F autosplit array starts at index [0] while awk fields start with $1.
$#F is the number of elements in @F