awk split adds whole string to array position 1 (reason unknown) - linux

Question

So I have a .txt file that looks like this:
mona 70 77 85 77
john 85 92 78 80
andreja 89 90 85 94
jasper 84 64 81 66
george 54 77 82 73
ellis 90 93 89 88
I have created a grades.awk script that contains the following code:
{
FS=" "
names=$1
vi1=$2
vi2=$3
vi3=$4
rv=$5
#printf("%s ",names);
split(names,nameArray," ");
printf("%s\t",nameArray[1]); //prints the whole array of names for some reason, instead of just the name at position 1 in array ("john")
}
So my question is, how do I split this correctly? Am I doing something wrong?
How do you read line by line, word by word correctly. I need to add each column into its own array. I've been searching for the answer for quite some time now and can't fix my problem.

Answer 1

here is a template to calculate average grades per student
$ awk '{sum=0; for(i=2;i<=NF;i++) sum+=$i;
printf "%s\t%5.2f\n", $1, sum/(NF-1)}' file
mona 77.25
john 83.75
andreja 89.50
jasper 73.75
george 71.50
ellis 90.00

Answer 2

printf("%s\t",nameArray[1])
is doing exactly what you want it to do but you aren't printing any newline between invocations so it's getting called once per input line and outputting one word at a time but since you aren't outputting any newlines between words you just get 1 line of output. Change it to:
printf("%s\n",nameArray[1])
There are a few other issues with your code of course (e.g. you're setting FS in the wrong place and unnecessarily, names only every contains 1 word so splitting it into an array doesn't make sense, etc.) but I think that's what you were asking about specifically.
If that's not all you want then edit your question to clarify what you're trying to do and add concise, testable sample input and expected output.