I need some help on how to extract a specific string of a line.
I have a file with thousands of lines like this:
Eukaryota; Alveolata; Ciliophora; Intramacronucleata; Paramecium#
Eukaryota; Viridiplantae; Streptophyta; Embryophyta#
Bacteria; Cyanobacteria; Synechococcales; Acaryochloridaceae; Acaryochloris#
Eukaryota; Viridiplantae#
Bacteria; Proteobacteria; Alphaproteobacteria#
And I would like to obtain the first and the last item of each line. So the output would be:
Eukaryota; Paramecium#
Eukaryota; Embryophyta#
Bacteria; Acaryochloris#
Eukaryota; Viridiplantae#
Bacteria; Alphaproteobacteria#
I know how to get the 1st column with
awk '{print$1}' fileIn > fileOut
but I don't know how to get the last item as it is always in different columns.
I tried adding the # and then just keep XX characters before the # with
grep -E -o '.{X,X}PATTERN. fileIn > fileOut
where the output looks like: les; Sulfolobaceae; Sulfolobus# ; Thermoproteaceae; Caldivirga# les; Haloferacaceae; Haloferax# Haloferacaceae; Haloquadratum# ales; Natrialbaceae; Natrialba#
But then I have to repeat the procedure and remove ; until I'm left only with the final item.
I've search to see if there is any grep or awk option to do that, extract 1st and last column or extract just the characters attached to # but I could not find any that work for me.
I would appreciate any suggestions on how to proceed.
Thanks.