Issue

I want to get abc/123/efg from abc/123/efg/456

I try to get the first NF - 1 fields and concatenate them with /.

So I do:

echo abc/123/efg/456 | awk -F "/" 'BEGIN {OFS="/"} {for(i=1;i<=NF-1;i++) {var = var+$i} END {print var}'

However, it did not work as I expected.

What am I doing wrong?

Is there any way to do this more elegantly?

Solution

Here is my approach: Remove the last field. Yes, it is that easy. The code:

echo "abc/123/efg/456" | awk -F/ -vOFS=/ '{NF--; print}'

Notes

The flag -F/ specifies the input field separator
The flag -vOFS=/ specifies the output field separator
The NF-- statement decreases the number of fields by one
The print statement prints the whole record (line) after the removal of the last field

Answered By - Hai Vu

Answer Checked By - Clifford M. (WPSolving Volunteer)