echo field separator

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

I am trying to echo all fields except for the last field.

I want to include the field seperator, but it is removed.

echo "a;s;v;g" | awk -F ";" '{$(NF--)=""; print}'

a s v

I want an output like this:
a;s;v;

2 
echo "a;s;v;g" | awk 'BEGIN{FS=OFS=";"}{$(NF--)=""; print}'
3

Using shell parameter expansion

var="a;s;v;g"
echo ${var%;*}

or awk

echo "a;s;v;g" | awk -F ";" '{$(NF--)=""}1' OFS=\;
4

or sed

echo "a;s;v;g" | awk -F ";" '{$(NF--)=""; print}' | sed "s/\ /;/g"