Function to extract columns from an input stream 

col() { awk '{print $('$(echo $* | sed -e s/-/NF-/g -e 's/ /),$(/g')')}'; }

December 7, 2012 — bashoneliners

Explanation

A slightly improved version of the original one-liner to allow negative indexes to extract columns relative to the end of the line, for example:

$ echo a b c | col 1 -0 -1
a c b

In this example the function expands to:

awk '{print $(1), $(NF-0), $(NF-1)}'
text-processing data-manipulation
echo awk sed col

Related one-liners

Function to extract columns from an input stream 

col() { awk '{print $'$(echo $* | sed -e 's/ /,$/g')'}'; }

April 5, 2012 — bashoneliners