I have a piece of script that needs to pull every element in column 2 from a file of varying size. Rather than writing something to read the file and then pass the data line by line to my script, I want to use awk.

However, what is the correct syntax to get awk to call a function (named via:

fcnname()
{
.
.
}
)

with the second column ($2), i.e. such as

awk '{fcnname($2)}' somefilename

I know I can do it from the command line or from yet another script and use the "system" command...and that is my next tack, but Id rather tie this all up in one pretty package.....

I have been playing with this syntax all day and not getting it right...

thanks