arraysshellindexingawksplit

how to access last index of array from split function inside awk?

How can i do this using awk?

Example - 

awk '{split($1,A,"."); print A[-1], $1, $2, $3, $4}'

Sample input and output.

Input 

123 456 abc.def.ghi 789 
321 654 qaz.wsx.edc.rfv 987

Output 

ghi 123 456 abc.def.ghi 789  
rfv 321 654 qaz.wsx.edc.rfv 987
Solution

  • If your problem is exactly as the example in your question, take the answer from @muzido, $NF will give you the last field.

    If you just want to know the last element of an array by split():

    split() function will return you how many elements it has just "splitted", test with your code: awk '{print split($1,A,".")}' file you will see the number. Then you can just use it by:

    awk '{n=split($1,A,"."); print A[n]}' file 
# n is the length of array A