Bash - getting MAX value from a list of integers

Question

This script breaks up the cvs list into three columns. we are focusing on the "name" column. I want to discover the name that has the most characters. Once I find the name with the most characters, I want to assign that to a variable.

#!/bin/bash
for i in $(cat homeaway.txt )
do
echo $i | while IFS=, read -r area name host
do
        maxLength=0
        length=${#name}
        if [ $length -gt $maxLength ] ; then
            maxLength=$length
        else
           :
        fi
        printf "%s\n" $maxLength

      done
done

The script says - in English - If the length is greater than maxlength, set length to maxLength, if not, do nothing. The area string with the most characters in it is "script_name_12345678999999" which has 26. When the script reads through all the characters, $maxLength should return 26.

__DATA__
HOME,script_name_12345,USAhost.com   
AWAY,script_name_123,USAhost.com
HOME,script_name_1,EUROhost.com
AWAY,script_name_123,USAhost.com
HOME,script_name_123456,EUROhost.com
AWAY,script_name_12345678999999,USAhost.com
HOME,script_name_1234,USAhost.com
AWAY,script_name_1234578,USAhost.com
HOME,script_name_12,EUROhost.com
AWAY,script_name_123456789,USAhost.com

Once the script reaches the area value with 26 characters in it, it should stop assigning anything to $maxLength. Instead it returns a list of each strings length, and I have no idea how the zero gets in here

[email protected] $ ./length_test.sh
17
0   ### how does the zero get in here ?
15
13
15
18
26  ###script_name_12345678999999
16
19
14
21

Answer 1

my_command | sort -n | tail -1

Sort the output of the command numeric and ascending. Get the last element in the resulting list.

Answer 2

On GNU/Linux, you can also do this in one shot. If the file data has your records:

cut --delimiter=, --fields=2 < data | wc --max-line-length

In English:

• Pluck the 2nd column, using "," as the field separator
• Print the length of the longest line