For example, how can I strip away the names of the states in this string and only keep he two character abbreviations?

(In my file the state names and abbreviations are separated by a tab.)

Alabama    AL
Alaska    AK
Arizona    AZ
Arkansas    AR
California    CA


Also...how could I turn this string:

AL
AK
AZ
AR
CA


into: AL¶AK¶AZ¶AR¶CA