Often you may want to use awk to print all columns in a file after a specific number.
You can use the following syntax to do so:
awk '{s=""; for (i=2; i <= NF; i++) s=s $i " "; print s}' player_stats.txt
This particular example prints all fields after and including column 2 of the text file named player_stats.txt.
Note that this syntax uses a for loop to print each column in the file ranging from column 2 to column NF, which stands for “number of fields” and extracts the last field in a file.
By using this approach, we’re able to print all fields after and including column 2.
The following example shows how to use this syntax in practice.
Example: Use awk to Print All Columns After Specific Number
Suppose we have the following text file named player_stats.txt that contains information about statistics for various basketball players:
Suppose that we would like to print all fields after and including column 2 (the “points” column) of the file.
We can use the following syntax to do so:
awk '{s=""; for (i=2; i <= NF; i++) s=s $i " "; print s}' player_stats.txt
The following screenshot shows how to use this syntax in practice:
Notice that this prints all fields in the file after and including column 2.
Feel free to change i=2 to a different number in the for loop to instead print all columns after a different specific number.
Related Tutorials
The following tutorials explain how to perform other common tasks in awk:
How to Use awk to Print Rows Where Column Equals Value
How to Use awk to Print a Range of Columns
How to Use awk to Print All Fields Except First Field
