Re: [coreutils] "cut" from last column

[Bauke Jan Douma]

Philip Ganchev wrote on 02-12-06 23:33:
> Hi
>
> I have a suggestion to allow the "cut" command to understand column
> (field) numbers relative to the last column.  I find I need this
> functionality very often when working with tabular data.  Currently,
> the expression to achieve this is clumsy:
>
> cut -f 3,5-$(echo $(head -1 myfile | wc -w) - 3 | bc) myfile
>
> The new syntax could use +1 to specify the last column, +2 to specify
> the second-last, etc.  This syntax is the same as for the "tail"
> command.  Then you can achieve the same as the above expression by
> writing:
>
> cut -f 3,5-+3 myfile

Couldn't you use rev(1).  If you're using Linux, it's in
the util-linux package.
rev < myfile | cut -something | rev

bjd