Here is my file name countries

USSR 8650 262 Asia
Canada 3852 24 North America
China 3692 866 Asia
USA 3615 219 North America
Brazil 3286 116 South America
India 1269 637 Asia
Argentina 1072 26 South America
Sudan 968 19 Africa
Algeria 920 18 Africa

Assuming the second column is the total area, how would I total that column? Many thanks.

Forgot to mention that it can only be for all North American countries

area=0
total=0
for area in `grep "North America" countries | awk '{print $2}'`
     do total=$(($total+$area))
     done
echo $total

monitor:/tmp# area=0; total=0; for area in `grep "North America" countries | awk '{print $2}'`; do total=$(($total+$area)); done; echo $total
7467

using awk..

awk '/North America/{s+=$2}END{print s}' data.file

awk '{n=n+$2}END{print n}' filename

summer_cherry,

The OP only wants to see the result for North America.

Best regards.

Similar, but use associative arrays to store the values.

awk ' { sum[$2]+=$3 } END { for (j in sum) print j,sum[j]; }'