Hi,

I have a file a.txt and it has values in it

Eg :-

I need to read through the file and find the number that is the greatest in them all.

Can any one assit me on this.

Thanks

sort the file in ascending order and do tail -1 filename
or descending order and do head -1 filename

Gaurav

This could be it, a easy method if your file size is small..

max=0

exec 4<&0
exec < file_of_nos

while read line
do
if [ $line -gt $m ]
then
max=$line
else
continue
fi
done

echo "Max no is:$max"

manthasirisha, Thank u so much,

Your solution works great, but it does not go beyond 5 lines,..what if i have 10 lines...how can i modify the script to suite that.


Thank you so much once again.

maxnum=$(sort -n a.txt |tail -1)

systemali,

i tried the script with an input file of more that 50 lines and it worked... check ur shell compatibility..

anyway, the easiest method is suggested above .. it should do the trick!

good luck,
Sirisha

Hi Sirisha,

Yes that worked just fine , now i have another file which is in decimals :

Those are actually versions and I need to find the highest version number from the list above, How can this be accomplished.

Thanks for all your assistance.