On shell, I pipe to awk when I need a particular column.
This prints column 9, for example:
... | awk \'{print $9}\'
How can I tell
Generally perl replaces awk/sed/grep et. al., and is much more portable (as well as just being a better penknife).
perl -lane 'print "@F[8..$#F]"'
Timtowtdi applies of course.