Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi,

I need to perform a grep from a file, but ignore any results from the first column.
For simplicity I have changed the actual data, but for arguments sake, I have a file that reads:

Code:

MONACO   Monaco  ASMonaco
MANUTD   ManUtd  ManchesterUnited
NEWCAS   NewcastleUnited
NAC000    NAC  NACBreda

The first column in this file will always contain a 6-character ID. This file is basically a lookup table where a grep is performed with the idea of returning the ID in the first column. There can be many aliases for each ID, as you can see above.
The problem I have is that sometimes I get 2 IDs returned. For example, when I grep for 'NAC', with the aim being to return the ID 'NAC000', but this grep also matches the ID for the MONACO line.

Is there any way to grep, but ignore any matches from the first column? Or perhaps grep only from column 2, or 3 etc etc?

Thanks.

Moderator's Comments:

Please use code tags when posting data and code samples!

Just grep for space followed by zero or more chars then your string:

Code:

$ grep " .*NAC" infile
NAC000 NAC NACBreda

grep for 'NAC' in the SECOND column

Code:

nawk 'pat ~ $col' pat='NAC' col=2 myFile

See if this works for you:

Code:

egrep '^.{6}.*NAC' input_file

Thanks guys, found egrep was best for what I wanted, appreciated shell_life.

Code:

awk '$2~/NAC/' infile