Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

Setting delimiters for fields

By default, the delimiter for fields is a space. The -F option defines a different field delimiter.

    $ awk -F: '{ print $NF }' /etc/passwd

Or:

    awk 'BEGIN { FS=":" } { print $NF }' /etc/passwd

We can set the output field separator by setting OFS="delimiter" in the BEGIN block.