AWK or sed for removing the first 'field' of a line

awk-or-sed.sh

# This should print 'second:third'

echo first:second:third | awk -F: '{ print substr($0, index($0, FS) + 1) }'

# Same here, but shorter code.

echo first:second:third | sed -e 's/^[^:]*://'

# Slightly more verbose awk version for 'second:third' output

echo first:second:third | awk -F: '{ for (k = 2; k < NF; k++) { printf $k FS } ; print $NF }'

# The verbose version can be generalized to remove any other field too,
# e.g. the second field, and print 'first:third'

echo first:second:third | awk -F: '{ for (k = 1; k < NF; k++) { if (k != 2) printf $k FS } ; print $NF }'