Shell Programming and Scripting

   a_2  a_3 s_4 t_6
b  0 0.9 0.004   0
c 0 0 1 0
d 0 0.98 0 0
e 0.0023 0.96 0 0.0034

b a_3 0.9
c s_4 1
d a_3 0.98
e a_3 0.96

awk '
NR==1   {for (i=1; i<=NF; i++) TT[i+1]=$i
         next
        }
        {MAX=$2
         COL=2
         for (i=3; i<=NF; i++) if ($i>MAX)      {MAX=$i
                                                 COL=i
                                                }
         print $1, TT[COL], MAX
        }
' file
b a_3 0.9
c s_4 1
d a_3 0.98
e a_3 0.96

$ cat foodata
X a_2 a_3 s_4 t_6
b 0 0.9 0.004 0
c 0 0 1 0
d 0 0.98 0 0
e 0.0023 0.96 0 0.0034

$ ./foo.sh <foodata
b: a_3 0.9 (2)
c: s_4 1 (3)
d: a_3 0.98 (2)
e: a_3 0.96 (2)

$ cat foo.sh
#!/bin/bash
read header
columns=($header)
while read data; do
    line=($data)
    max=1 # index of first element
    for (( i=2 ; $i < ${#line[@]}; i++ )) ; do 
    if (( "$(echo ${line[$i]} '>' ${line[$max]} | bc -l)" == "1" )); then max=$i; fi
    done
  echo ${line[0]}: ${columns[$max]} ${line[$max]} "($max)"
done

$ ./foo.pl <foodata
b    a_3    0.9
c    s_4    1
d    a_3    0.98
e    a_3    0.96

$ cat foo.pl
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my $debug=1;
my @headings=split ' ',<>;
while (<>) {
    chomp;
    my @line=split ' ',$_;
    my $max=1;
    foreach my $index ( 2 .. $#line ) { $max=$index if ($line[$max] < $line [$index]); }
    print $line[0]."\t".$headings[$max]."\t".$line[$max]."\n";
}