text1;text2;text3;text4
...

awk -F';' -v col=$col -v pat="$val" '$col ~ pat' $input

cat text_file.txt| cut -d';' column_num | grep pattern

#!/usr/bin/env python
 import sys
 column = 1 # the column to search
 value = "the data you're looking for"
 with open("your file","r") as source:
    for line in source:
        fields = line.strip().split(';')
        if fields[column] == value:
             print line

egrep "^([^;]+;){`expr $col - 1`}$value;([^;]+;){`expr 3 - $col`}([^;]+){`expr 4 - $col`}$" filename

egrep "^([^;]+;){`expr $col - 1`}$value(;|$)" filename