title: Awk for a string containing the special character "."
body: <p>This seems like an easy question, but I have tried a number of approaches I've found in other questions but have had no luck.</p>
  
  <p>I am simply trying to use awk to look for the string (ExAC_ALL=.) within the 8th column of a txt file, however the speacial character "." seems to be causing issues.</p>
  
  <p>The code I am trying to use is</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt; awk ' ($8 ~ "ExAC_ALL=.") {print $0}' input.txt &gt; output.txt
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have also tried:</p>
  
  <pre><code>&gt; EXAC="ExAC_ALL=." 
  &gt; awk -v NAME="$EXAC" '$8 ~ NAME { print $0 }' input.txt &gt; output.txt
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have also tried escaping the "." symbol multiple ways.</p>
  
  <p>Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.</p>