CODEWITHSUNDEEP
linuxbashshellsedsh
03t02
03t02

Reputation: 381

Delete the last word of a line in shell

I'm looking for how to delete the last word of a line in shell ! I use sed but I only found the way how delete the lase word of every line, but not a specify line. For exemple: I have a file test.db

key1 value1
key2 value2
key3 value3

And I just want to delete value3

sed -i s/'\w*$'// test.db

This line just delete the last word of every line !

Upvotes: 6

Views: 22372

Answers (5)

lurker
lurker

Reputation: 58224

If you want to delete the last word only off of the last line, then you can use:

sed -i '$s/\w*$//' test.db

If you want to delete the last word from the line for key3:

sed -i '/key3/s/\w*$//' test.db

Upvotes: 3

repzero
repzero

Reputation: 8412

Deleting the last word of your line

since you are targeting the line key3 value3

  sed -i '/key3 value3/s/\S*$//' test.db

where \S is represents a digit that is not a space or whitespace.

Deleting the last word of a particular line (General rule)

   sed -i '/line pattern/s/\S*$//' test.db

line pattern represents a pattern that is found on the line that you want to target

Upvotes: 1

Jotne
Jotne

Reputation: 41446

Here is an awk to remove last field:

echo "one two three" | awk '{$NF="";sub(/[ \t]+$/,"")}1'
one two

Upvotes: 2

potong
potong

Reputation: 58351

This might work for you (GNU sed):

sed -r '$s/(\s*)\S+(\s*)$/\1\2/' file

this removes the last non-space token from the last line (keeping any surrounding white space).

To remove surrounding white space as well use:

sed -r '$s/\s*\S+\s*$//' file

Upvotes: 0

Gilles Quénot
Gilles Quénot

Reputation: 184965

Try this :

sed -i '1{s/[^ ]\+\s*$//}' file test.db

Upvotes: 3

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