Variable storage using awk

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

there is a file which contains some values in column format. I want to store those values in a variable.but when i am using awk it is storing all the values at a time.

x=`awk '{print $1}' test2.txt`
echo $x
ab cd mn jk yt

but i want the values to be stored one by one in that variable.
like

x=`awk '{print $1}' test2.txt`
echo $x
ab
echo $x
cd

suggestions please.

2

Try:

while read x rest; do
  echo "$x"
done < test2.txt
3

actually my input file is in this format

timestamp errormessage errorcode description

from this file i want to pickup the errorcode column and store it in some variable. but when i using awk it is storing all the values inside that column in that variable.i want one value at a time in that variable.

I am using awk as i want to pick a column from a file.

4 
while read timestamp errormessage errorcode description
do
  echo "Error code: $errorcode"
done < test2.txt

Is error message one word? Otherwise please post a sample of your input file.