Awk

Introduction

$ awk -F : '{print $1}' infile

Prints column 1 of each line of the input file (assuming columns are separated by field-separator token :.

$ awk -f script.awk infile

will execute the awk script script.awk

You can create an awk array with (e.g.):

 split(input_string,name_array,":")

and then loop over all indices (but strangely not in order):

for (i in name_array)
   print i, name_array[i];

so it is probably better to use:

for(i=1;i<=5;i++) {
  print i name_array[i]
  }