Given a file with lines of text of different length:

How to find out the length of the LONGEST line in the file ?
(no need to know WHICH)

Thanks
<5.8 sun4u sparc>

klabu wrote:
> Given a file with lines of text of different length:
> 
> How to find out the length of the LONGEST line in the file ?
> (no need to know WHICH)
> 
> Thanks
> <5.8 sun4u sparc>

Why do I suspect that this is a homework problem?

On Jul 28, 10:14 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" :
> Why do I suspect that this is a homework problem?


no no Rich I swear..
it's not HW...(LOL I wish I were that young !)
100% real-life need-to-know. I know Linux's "wc -L" - too bad this
version of our Solaris doesn't have it.
I'm just pretty good at keeping Internet postings as short and as
precise as possible.

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:07:03 -0700 (PDT), klabu <klabu76@gmail.com> wrote:
|
| Given a file with lines of text of different length:
|
| How to find out the length of the LONGEST line in the file ?
| (no need to know WHICH)
|
| Thanks
| <5.8 sun4u sparc>


This works in bash on Linux and Solaris (at least the versions I tested
it on).


cat filename | while read Line
do
    echo $Line | wc -c
done | sort -n | tail -1


Note: This will count the trailing newline character as well as all the
text.


-- 
Reverend Paul Colquhoun, ULC.    http://andor.dropbear.id.au/~paulcol
     Asking for technical help in newsgroups?  Read this first:
        http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#intro

klabu wrote:
> On Jul 28, 10:14 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" :
>> Why do I suspect that this is a homework problem?
> 
> 
> no no Rich I swear..
> it's not HW...(LOL I wish I were that young !)
> 100% real-life need-to-know. I know Linux's "wc -L" - too bad this
> version of our Solaris doesn't have it.
> I'm just pretty good at keeping Internet postings as short and as
> precise as possible.
> 


/usr/gnu/bin/wc ???


/Thommy M.
-- 
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\ /  ribbon campaign   | AB Hardeberga IT
 X   against HTML mail | Skifferv�gen 23, 224 78 Lund
/ \  and postings      | +46 70 969 57 93
=======================================================================
http://www.at-hardeberga.com             thommym (at) at-hardeberga.com
=======================================================================
"The box said 'Windows 2000 Server or better', so I installed Solaris."
=======================================================================

klabu wrote:
> Given a file with lines of text of different length:
> 
> How to find out the length of the LONGEST line in the file ?
> (no need to know WHICH)

do you have perl ?

    BugBear

klabu wrote:
> On Jul 28, 10:14 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" :
>> Why do I suspect that this is a homework problem?
> 
> 
> no no Rich I swear..
> it's not HW...(LOL I wish I were that young !)
> 100% real-life need-to-know. I know Linux's "wc -L" - too bad this
> version of our Solaris doesn't have it.
> I'm just pretty good at keeping Internet postings as short and as
> precise as possible.
> 

If you only need to do it once, eyeball it!  There may be some tool that 
does this but, if so, I don't know what it is.

If it's a recurring problem you'll have to write a script or a program 
to read the file, one line at a time, count the characters, and save the 
  value if the length is greater than the previous longest line.  That's 
very standard find the minimum/maximum and why I suspected it was a 
student problem.  Don't forget to initialize your maximum to zero.

klabu <klabu76@gmail.com> wrote in news:7e70f1ae-d8ef-4a45-b50d-
585409f52a86@27g2000hsf.googlegroups.com:

> On Jul 28, 10:14 pm, "Richard B. Gilbert" :
>> Why do I suspect that this is a homework problem?
> 
> 
> no no Rich I swear..
> it's not HW...(LOL I wish I were that young !)
> 100% real-life need-to-know. I know Linux's "wc -L" - too bad this
> version of our Solaris doesn't have it.
> I'm just pretty good at keeping Internet postings as short and as
> precise as possible.
> 

Assuming that the host has perl on it, you could do:

  perl -ne '$ll = length if length > $ll; END {print $ll}' file

where 'file' is the file whose longest line you would like to 
determine.

....Steve

-- 
Steve van der Burg
Technical Analyst, Information Services
London Health Sciences Centre
London, Ontario, Canada
Email: steve.vanderburg@lhsc.on.ca

On Jul 29, 2:14 am, "Thommy M. Malmstr=F6m" <thom...@at-hardeberga.com>
wrote:
> /usr/gnu/bin/wc ???


bash-2.03$ ls /usr/gnu
/usr/gnu: No such file or directory

On Jul 29, 8:51 am, Steve van der Burg wrote:
> Assuming that the host has perl on it, you could do:
>
>   perl -ne '$ll = length if length > $ll; END {print $ll}' file


bash-2.03$ perl -ne '$ll = length if length > $ll; END {print $ll}'
cp_3233884.lst
4191340bash-2.03$

thanks! that's correct the length is 4191340 --- how to put the shell
prompt on newline?

On Tue, 29 Jul 2008 07:59:37 -0700, noobuntu wrote:
> On Jul 29, 2:14 am, "Thommy M. Malmstr�m" <thom...@at-hardeberga.com>
> wrote:
>> /usr/gnu/bin/wc ???

> bash-2.03$ ls /usr/gnu
> /usr/gnu: No such file or directory

Present starting with Solaris Express (Nevada).

noobuntu <webtourist@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Jul 29, 8:51 am, Steve van der Burg wrote:
>> Assuming that the host has perl on it, you could do:
>>
>>   perl -ne '$ll = length if length > $ll; END {print $ll}' file
> 
> 
> bash-2.03$ perl -ne '$ll = length if length > $ll; END {print $ll}'
> cp_3233884.lst
> 4191340bash-2.03$
> 
> thanks! that's correct the length is 4191340 --- how to put the shell
> prompt on newline?

Either Add a -l to perl   $ perl -lne 'blah....     or

change ->print $ll<-  to ->print "$ll\n"<-

perl -lne 'blah...

And your answer depends on whether or not you want to count the newline
on the input file as part of the length.  If you use -l, it does not
count the newline.  Without the -l it does.

-- 
Darren