Shell Programming and Scripting

Hi All,
I read through the already existing AWK topics but could not find answers, so please help me out here:

Question1)
Scenario: there is a file containing lines and in each line there is a date written. (e.g. blabla blabla blabla Jun 27 )
I would like to catch those date information into variables in AWK. It seems I have a problem. That is the piece of code I use:
awk '
{ JOB_DAY=$6; JOB_MONTH=$5; print $JOB_DAY, $JOB_MONTH
} ' $TEMP_FILENAME

The error I got:
awk: Field $(Jun) is not correct.
The input line number is 1. The file is /tmp/temp_print.txt.2454279.
The source line number is 2.

Question2)
I would like to later on expand this code and use system("grep ':' $JOB_MONTH") command. The interesting this would be not the command's output, but the return code. How can I catch the return code of an external command call from within AWK?

Question3)
This AWK stuff is in a middle of a script. In the script I have functions defined. How can I refer to the script functions from AWK? Like normal command, or as they would be external command thus calling AWK's system() option?

As you can see I am pretty newbie but have read through tons of articles and could not find the answers.

Thanks,
BearCheese

Code:

awk '
{ JOB_DAY=$6; JOB_MONTH=$5; print JOB_DAY, JOB_MONTH
} ' $TEMP_FILENAME

Just use variable name to get its value.

you print variables in AWK without the "$" sign.

an example only for using system().

Code:

awk 'BEGIN{ 
  cmd  = "some system command"
  cmd | getline
  rc=(close(cmd)/256)
  print rc
}'

you can just put inside the script

Code:

awk 'BEGIN{ 
 test()
}
function test(){
  print "Test"
}'

Execute the command with the system function that returns the exit status of the command.

Code:

status = system ("grep -q " JOB_MONTH " file");
if (status == 0) {
   . . . . .
}

Thank you all, I used your solutions and everything is fine now!
Cheers
BearCheese