using awk with column value conditions

Question

I m learning awk from The AWK Programming Language and I have a problem with one of the examples   If I wanted to print  3 if  2 is equal to a value  e g 1   I was using this command which works fine   awk   2  1  print  3    lt infile gt    more   But when I substitute 1 by another searching criteria   e g findtext   the command doesn t work   awk   1   findtext  print  3    lt infile gt    more   It returns no output and I m sure that  findtext  exist on the input file   I also tried this  but it does not work   awk   1    findtext   print  3    lt infile gt    more   Here s my test file named  test  and it has 9 lines and 8 fields  separated by space   1 11 0 959660297 0 0 021231423 -0 0073 -0 0031 MhZisp 2 14 0 180467091 0 800424628 0 0 0566 0 0103 ClNonZ 3 19 0 98089172 0 0 -0 0158 0 0124 MhNonZ 4 15 0 704883227 0 265392781 0 010615711 -0 0087 -0 0092 MhZisp 5 22 0 010615711 0 959660297 0 010615711 0 0476 0 0061 ClNonZ 6 23 0 715498938 0 0 265392781 -0 0013 -0 0309 Unkn 7 26 0 927813163 0 0 053078556 -0 0051 -0 0636 MhZisp 8 44 0 55626327 0 222929936 0 201698514 0 0053 -0 0438 MhZisp 9 31 0 492569002 0 350318471 0 138004246 0 0485 0 0088 ClNonZ   Here s what I did and the output    awk   8     ClNonZ   print  3   test     grep ClNonZ test  2 14 0 180467091 0 800424628 0 0 0566 0 0103 ClNonZ 5 22 0 010615711 0 959660297 0 010615711 0 0476 0 0061 ClNonZ 9 31 0 492569002 0 350318471 0 138004246 0 0485 0 0088 ClNonZ   I expect to see this which is the  3 that has  ClNonZ  in their  8   0 180467091  0 010615711  0 492569002   Don t know why the awk command didn t return anything  Any thoughts

User · Accepted Answer

If you re looking for a particular string  put quotes around it   awk   1     findtext   print  3     Otherwise  awk will assume it s a variable name

User · Answer

Depending on the AWK implementation are you using    is ok or not   Have you tried     For example  if you want  1 to be  hello    awk   1     hello    print  3      lt infile gt      means  1 start  and   is  1 end

User · Answer

My awk version is 3 1 5   Yes  the input file is space separated  no tabs   According to arutaku s answer  here s what I tried that worked   awk   8    ClNonZ   print  3     test   0 180467091 0 010615711 0 492569002     awk   8    ClNonZ    print  3   test   0 180467091 0 010615711 0 492569002   What didn t work I don t know why and maybe due to my awk version      awk   8     ClNonZ    print  3     test  awk   8     ClNonZ    print  3    test   Thank you all for your answers  comments and help

User · Answer

This is more readable for me   awk   if   2    findtext   print  3    lt infile gt

User · Answer

This method uses regexp  it should work   awk   2    findtext   print  3    lt infile gt

User · Answer

please try this  echo  VAR   grep ClNonZ   awk   print  3      or  echo cat filename   grep ClNonZ   awk   print  3

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