Use a word as a delimiter for cut command in linux without using awk

Question

I'm trying to take the second segment of a line inside a file delimited by a certain string, and it would usually work something like awk -F ':: My Delimiter ::' '{print $2}', but if I try to print $2 it will print the second argument passed onto the function in which the awk command is located. Is there an alternate way to split a line by a delimiter and print a certain part of the result?

This is the exact line I'm having issues with:

for transaction in $(cat $1)
do
    echo "$transaction" | awk -F ':: My Delimiter ::' '{print $2}' >> testLog.data.out
done

Note: The delimiter would be exactly as described. :: My Delimiter ::

Answer 1

Rather than using cut, I think you should really use awk - your example awk -F ':: My Delimiter ::' '{print $2}' should work. If you printed the second arguments passed into the function containing that awk, then that means the $2 was not inside single quotes - maybe you used double quotes? This wouldn't work (notice the double quotes):

awk -F ':: My Delimiter ::' "{print $2}"

But this would (your example):

awk -F ':: My Delimiter ::' '{print $2}'