Piping a bash variable into awk and storing the output

Question

To illustrate my problem,

TEST="Hi my name is John"
OUTP=`echo $TEST | awk '{print $3}'`
echo $OUTP

What I would expect this to do is pass the $TEST variable into awk and store the 3rd word into $OUTP.

Instead I get "Hi: not found", as if it is expecting the input to be a file. If I pass just a string instead of a variable, however, there is no problem. What would be the best way to approach this?

Thanks all!

Answer 1

#!/bin/bash
TEST="Hi my name is John"
set -- $TEST
echo $3

#!/bin/bash
TEST="Hi my name is John"
var=$(echo $TEST|awk '{print $3}')
echo $var

Answer 2

In one line :

echo $(echo "Hi my name is John" | awk '{print $3}')