How to find the position of specific word in a txt file using awk?

December 12, 2022

I need to find the position of a certain word in a text file
I tried to do something like this but it didn’t work (no any output):
For example txt file contains:

A    B    C
Tarun    A12    1
Man    B6    2
Praveen    M42    3

So I need to find a word ,,Tarun" position
the output should be: Row: 2 Column 1
But instead I get no output

read -p "Write a word: " word
   awk '{ 
    for(i=1;i<=NF;i++)
        if($i == '$word')
            print "Row: " NR, "Column: " i 
}' file.txt

>Solution :

The only problems in the original code stem from passing the variable word from bash to awk incorrectly.

Fixing this to use awk -v var="value" as taught by the answers to the preexisting question How do I use shell variables in an awk script?, the code works as-intended:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

word='Tarun'

# using this instead of a file so we can run in sandboxes without write support
getInput() { cat <<'EOF'
A    B    C
Tarun    A12    1
Man    B6    2
Praveen    M42    3
EOF
}

awk -v word="$word" '{ 
    for(i=1;i<=NF;i++)
        if($i == word)
            print "Row: " NR, "Column: " i 
}' <(getInput)

correctly emits: