Question

A very simple question, which a found no answer to. How do I print out a specific field in awk?

awk '/word1/', will print out the whole sentence, when I need just a word1. Or I need a chain of patterns (word1 + word2) to be printed out only from a text.

Answer 1

Well if the pattern is a single word (which you want to print and can’t contaion FS (input field separator)) why not:

awk -v MYPATTERN="INSERT_YOUR_PATTERN" '$0 ~ MYPATTERN { print MYPATTERN }' INPUTFILE

If your pattern is a regex:

awk -v MYPATTERN="INSERT_YOUR_PATTERN" '$0 ~ MYPATTERN { print gensub(".*(" MYPATTERN ").*","\\1","1",$0) }' INPUTFILE

If your pattern must be checked in every single field:

awk -v MYPATTERN="INSERT_YOUR_PATTERN" '$0 ~ MYPATTERN { 
    for (i=1;i<=NF;i++) {
        if ($i ~ MYPATTERN) { print "Field " i " in " NR " row matches: " MYPATTERN }
    }
}' INPUTFILE

Modify any of the above to your taste.