awk: Removing a column

cut is a great tool for the job of selecting one or more columns from some input lines but awk will also do it, albeit with two tricks:

1. When you reassign $0, awk splits it into the numbered fields, NF, $1 and $2 etc. on FS
2. When you reassign $1 (or any other numbered field), awk rebuilds $0 with FS replaced with OFS

{
    $2 = "" # Empty the second field
    $0 = $0 # Assign the line -> perform field splitting based on FS, reassigning NF, $1, $2, etc.
    $1 = $1 # Assign to a field -> rebuilds $0, with FS replaced with OF
}

From StackOverflow answer