Let's look at the substr function of awk.
This function has the form substr(s, a, b) and returns b number of chars from string s, starting at position a. The parameterb is optional.
Assume that we have a one line file called temp:
Every good boy.
Then, here are some substr examples:
nawk '{print substr($1,1,1)}' temp returns E
nawk '{print substr($1,3)}' temp returns ery
nawk '{print substr($2,3)}' temp returns od
nawk '{print substr($0,7,2)}' temp returns go