Print Specific Columns using AWK

Question

I'm trying to fetch the data from column B to D from a tab delimited file "FILE". The simple AWK code I use fetch the data, but unfortunately keeps the output in a single column and remove the identifiers (shown below).

Any suggestions please.

CODE

 awk '{for(i=2;i<=4;++i)print $i}' FILE

FILE

           A            B               C               D               E               F             G
   1_at   10.8435630935 10.8559287854   8.6666141543    8.820310681     9.9024050571    8.613199083   11.9807771094
   2_at   4.7615531106  4.5209119307    11.2467919586   8.8105151099    7.1831990104    11.0645055836 4.3726598561
   3_at   6.0025262754  5.4058080843    3.2475272982    3.1869728585    3.5654989547    

OUTPUT OBTAINED

B
C
D
10.8435630935
10.8559287854
8.6666141543
4.7615531106
4.5209119307
11.2467919586
6.0025262754
5.4058080843
3.2475272982

Answer 1

Why don't you directly use cut ?

$ cut -d$'\t' -f2-4 < file
B C D
10.8435630935 10.8559287854 8.6666141543
4.7615531106 4.5209119307 11.2467919586
6.0025262754 5.4058080843 3.2475272982

With awk you would need printf to avoid new lines of print :

awk -F"\t" '{for(i=2;i<=4;++i) printf "%s%s", $i, (i==4?RS:FS)}'