CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashawk
Zzrot
Zzrot

Reputation: 324

sum of second last column in bash

I want to find the sum of the second last column of a file that has variable number of columns.

I know that if I knew that exact number of the column, I would be able to do -

 awk '{s+=$1} END {print s}' mydatafile

for column 1. But not sure how I would do it if I didn't know the exact column number.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1381

Answers (1)

hek2mgl
hek2mgl

Reputation: 158280

The special variable NF refers to the number of fields per line in awk. To get the second last field you can access $(NF-1):

awk '{s+=$(NF-1)} END{print s}' file

Upvotes: 3

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