using awk with column value conditions

Question

I\'m learning awk from The AWK Programming Language and I have a problem with one of the examples.

If I wanted to print $3 if $2 is equal to a value (e.g.1

Answer 1

My awk version is 3.1.5.

Yes, the input file is space separated, no tabs.

According to arutaku's answer, here's what I tried that worked:

awk '$8 ~ "ClNonZ"{ print $3; }' test  
0.180467091
0.010615711
0.492569002


$ awk '$8 ~ "ClNonZ" { print $3}' test  
0.180467091
0.010615711
0.492569002

What didn't work(I don't know why and maybe due to my awk version:),

$awk '$8 ~ "^ClNonZ$"{ print $3; }' test
$awk '$8 == "ClNonZ" { print $3 }' test

Thank you all for your answers, comments and help!