unix - Awk formatting by field separators -

to start prefer not using sed remove last part; reason because file has lot of variables have with.

echo $new 

it display

jack: grow far away. loves food hotdogs, hamburgers, , steak. has lot more text. metro filer: 

so it's 1 lone line of text need break, rid of metro filer: generically possible can use other variables (100+ other variables).

also, says it has lot more text means there lot more text there, don't want make massive string. there colon @ beginning , end.

what is

jack: grow far away. loves food hotdogs, hamburgers, , steak. has lot more text. 

i tried couple things awk -f ":" , couldn't seem include jack:, great!

awk

$ echo "$new" | awk '{a=$1;for(i=2;i<nf-1;++i)a=a fs $i;print a}' jack: grow far away. loves food hotdogs, hamburgers, , steak. has lot more text. 

it assigns first field a, appends space , next field last 2 fields, , prints variable.

more readable:

{     string = $1     (i = 2; < nf-1; ++i)         string = string fs $i     print string } 

rev , cut

$ echo "$new" | rev | cut -d ' ' -f 3- | rev jack: grow far away. loves food hotdogs, hamburgers, , steak. has lot more text. 

this reverses output, extracts space separated fields starting third, , reverses again.

parameter expansion

$ echo "${new% * *}" jack: grow far away. loves food hotdogs, hamburgers, , steak. has lot more text. 

this says: remove end "space whatever space whatever", in non-greedy fashion.

sed

this isn't more complicated respect having many variables of other methods.

$ echo "$new" | sed 's/ [^ ]* [^ ]*$//' jack: grow far away. loves food hotdogs, hamburgers, , steak. has lot more text. 

this removes space , 2 non-space groups, separated space, end of string.