As seen at https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/cut-invocation.html, the section for ‘-f field-list’

‘--fields=field-list’ hints at some examples of using awk. The second example is wrong. it states:

awk '{print $NF-1}' # print the penultimate field

when it should be

awk '{print $(NF-1)}' # print the penultimate field

i.e., parenthesis missing.