Print second last column/field in awk

awk '{print $(NF-1)}'

Should work

Small addition to Chris Kannon' accepted answer: only print if there actually is a second last column.

(
echo       | awk 'NF && NF-1 { print ( $(NF-1) ) }'
echo 1     | awk 'NF && NF-1 { print ( $(NF-1) ) }'
echo 1 2   | awk 'NF && NF-1 { print ( $(NF-1) ) }'
echo 1 2 3 | awk 'NF && NF-1 { print ( $(NF-1) ) }'
)

It's simplest:

 awk '{print $--NF}' 

The reason the original $NF-- didn't work is because the expression is evaluated before the decrement, whereas my prefix decrement is performed before evaluation.