Search for a column by name in awk
I have a file that has many columns. Let us say “Employee_number” “Employee_name” “Salary”. I want to display all entries in a column by giving all or part of the column name. For example if my input “name” I want all the employee names printed. Is it possible to do this in a simple manner using awk?
Thanks
Given a script getcol.awk
as follows:
BEGIN {
colname = ARGV[1]
ARGV[1] = ""
getline
for (i = 1; i <= NF; i++) {
if ($i ~ colname) {
break;
}
}
if (i > NF) exit
}
{print $i}
… and the input file test.txt
:
apple banana candy deer elephant
A B C D E
A B C D E
A B C D E
A B C D E
A B C D E
A B C D E
A B C D E
… the command:
$ awk -f getcol.awk b <test.txt
… gives the following output:
B
B
B
B
B
B
B
Note that the output text does not include the first line of the test file, which is treated as a header.