i have a file like this:

awk.lst

smith : sales : 1200 : 2
jones:it:25000 : 2
roger : it : 1500 : 2
ravi | acct | 15000

i have 3 doubts

1)
when i say
awk -F ":" '$2 ~ /'it'/ {print $0}' awk.lst

i am not able to get jones in the ouput , is it because of space issue?

2)how to print all the second column values starting with s?

3) how to handle multiple record delimiters?

example, i want to take into account both ":" and also "|" in my
selections?

i mean awk -F ":" "|" is not working

I tend to use nawk if there is more than one field delimiter like:

nawk -F"[:|]" '{if ( $2 ~ "it" ){print}}' awk.lst

not sure if all flavours of awk like the multiple delimiter syntax....

All editions of awk should support the use of a regex as the field delimiter. The above data file probably needs something like this:
Which is:

- any number of spaces (including none), followed by
- a single character, either a : or a |, followed by
- any number of spaces (including none)

Comprende?