awk ignore case isn't working - awk

Question

I am using this code to get ip entries from host file with ignore case and it doesn't seem to work on AIX
Input file
172.23.1.230 enboprtpapzp04.digjam.com enboprtpapzp04
#172.23.0.33 enboprtpapzp04.digjam.com enboprt enboprtpapzp04
172.23.1.230 enboprtpapzp04.fixture.com enboprtpap enboprtpapzp04
awk -v client="$client" 'BEGIN {IGNORECASE = 1}{k=0; for (i=1;i<=NF;i++){if ($i==client){print $1}; k++}}' file
See the output below
client=ENBOPRTPAPZP04
awk -v client="$client" 'BEGIN {IGNORECASE = 1}{k=0; for (i=1;i<=NF;i++){if ($i==client){print $1}; k++}}' file
Nothing comes up
expected output
grep -i ENBOPRTPAPZP04 /etc/hosts | awk '{print $1}' | grep -v "^#"
172.23.1.230
172.23.1.230

Answer 1

It works here:
$ awk -v client="$client" 'BEGIN{IGNORECASE = 1} $2==client && /^[^#]/{print $1}' your_hosts
172.23.1.230
172.23.1.230
Are you sure you are using GNU awk? If not, you could:
$ awk -v client="$client" 'tolower($2)==tolower(client) && /^[^#]/{print $1}' your_hosts
In the light of the resent - whoops, I meant recent - edits to the question and the mentioning of the loop in the comments I'll add this:
$ awk -v client="$client" '{for(i=1;i<=NF;i++) if(tolower($i)==tolower(client) && $1!~/^#/)print $1}' your_new_hosts
172.23.1.230
172.23.1.230
Also, check #EdMorton's last comment below for a non-looping version.
The check for the /^#/ could be outside of the action block in the condition part:
$ awk ... '!/^#/ {for(i=1;i<=NF;i++) if(tolower($i)==tolower(client)) print $1}' your_new_hosts