Remove last character from string captured with awk

Question

I need to remove the last character from a string in this command:

sudo docker stats --no-stream 39858jf8 | awk '{if (NR!=1) {print $2}}'

The result is 5.20% , I need remove the % at the end, giving 5.20. Is it possibile to do this in the same command?

Voting to reopen since this is awk specific, the other you have to scroll scroll scroll (because line in general has many more options). — Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com, Mar 03 '20 at 09:18

score 92 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 23 '16 at 08:13

Yes, with substr() you can do string slicing:

... | awk '{if (NR!=1) {print substr($2, 1, length($2)-1)}}'

length($2) will get us the length of the second field, deducting 1 from that to strip off the last character.

Example:

$ echo spamegg foobar | awk '{print substr($2, 1, length($2)-1)}'
fooba

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