I have a big file with 127 columns and 869 rows. What I am trying to do is to get the absolute value of all numbers in the file, and then get the maximum of each column.

If this was for one column it wouldn't be a problem, I would use:

Code:

awk '{ print ($1 >= 0) ? $1 : 0 - $1}' file > out1
sort -n out1 > out2
tail out2> out3

But I don't know how could this be done in a larger file. Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!