title: How to select a given column from a line of text?
body: <p>Suppose I have this sentence:</p>
  
  <pre>
  My name is bob.
  </pre>
  
  <p>And I want to copy the word "is" from that sentence into a variable. How would I access that word, without knowing in advance the word I am looking for? If I know a specific word or string is in the third column of text in a five column text line, how can I take the word in the third column?</p>
  
  <p>I'm using the bourne shell.</p>