In the context of command line usage, what does the command {print $NF} do?

The command {print $NF} is used in the context of a command-line environment, particularly within tools like awk, which processes and analyzes text files and streams. The variable NF represents the number of fields (or columns) in the current line being processed. By using $NF, you are referring to the value of the last field in that line, since NF dynamically points to the total number of columns present. Therefore, using the command {print $NF} effectively retrieves and prints the value of the last column in each line of input.

This usage is particularly useful in scripts or commands that need to extract specific data from structured text files where the number of fields may vary from line to line. The ability to access the last column regardless of how many columns there are allows for flexibility in handling diverse data structures.