Hopefully someone out there in the world can help me, and anyone else with a similar problem, find a simple solution to capturing data. I have spent hours trying a one liner to solve something I thought was a simple problem involving awk, a csv file, and saving the output as a bash variable. In short here's the nut...

The Missions:

1) To output every other column, starting from the LAST COLUMN, with a specific iteration count.

2) To output every other column, starting from NEXT TO LAST COLUMN, with a specific iteration count.

The Data (file.csv):

```
@12@SayWhat@2@4@2.25@3@1.5@1@1@1@3.25
@7@Smarty@9@6@5.25@5@4@4@3@2@3.25
@4@IfYouLike@4@1@.2@1@.5@2@1@3@3.75
@3@LaughingHard@8@8@13.75@8@13@6@8.5@4@6
@10@AtFunny@1@3@.2@2@.5@3@3@5@6.5
@8@PunchLines@7@7@10.25@7@10.5@8@11@6@12.75

```

Desired results for Mission 1:

```
  2@2.25@1.5@1@3.25
  9@5.25@4@3@3.25
  4@.2@.5@1@3.75
  8@13.75@13@8.5@6
  1@.2@.5@3@6.5
  7@10.25@10.5@11@12.75

```

Desired results for Mission 2:

```
  SayWhat@4@3@1@1
  Smarty@6@5@4@2
  IfYouLike@1@1@2@3
  LaughingHard@8@8@6@4
  AtFunny@3@2@3@5
  PunchLines@7@7@8@6

```

My Attempts:

The closes I have come to solving any of the above problems, is an ugly pipe (which is OK for skinning a cat) for Mission 1. However, it doesn't use any declared iterations (which should be 5). Also, I'm completely lost on solving Mission 2.

Any help to simplify the below and solving Mission 2 will be HELLA appreciated!

```
outcome=$( awk 'BEGIN {FS = "@"} {for (i = 0; i <= NF; i += 2) printf ("%s%c", $(NF-i), i + 2 <= NF ? "@" : "\n");}' file.csv | sed 's/@@.*//g' | awk -F@ '{for (i=NF;i>0;i--){printf $i"@"};printf "\n"}' | sed 's/@$//g' | awk -F@ '{$1="";print $0}' OFS=@ | sed 's/^@//g' );

```

Also, if doing a loop for a specific number of iterations is helpful in solving this problem, then magic number is 5. Maybe a solution could be a for-loop that is counting from right to left and skipping every other column as 1 iteration, with the starting column declared as an awk variable (Just a thought I have no way of knowing how to do)

Thank you for looking over this problem.