How to find the highest number in an array?

Question

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How to sort an array in BASH

I have numbers in the array 10 30 44 44 69 12 11.... How to display the highest from array?

echo $NUM //result 69

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/7442417/how-to-sort-an-array-in-bash — paul, Oct 05 '12 at 10:28
What have you tried so far? Try to follow the [rubber duck](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/03/rubber-duck-problem-solving.html) example. — AncientSwordRage, Oct 05 '12 at 10:29

choroba · Accepted Answer · 2016-11-21T12:03:40.517

56

You can use sort to find out.

#! /bin/bash
ar=(10 30 44 44 69 12 11)
IFS=$'\n'
echo "${ar[*]}" | sort -nr | head -n1

Alternatively, search for the maximum yourself:

max=${ar[0]}
for n in "${ar[@]}" ; do
    ((n > max)) && max=$n
done
echo $max

edited Nov 21 '16 at 12:03

answered Oct 05 '12 at 10:28

choroba

1

Thank you very much And if there was a string instead of numbers? ar=("dsasd" "dsdas" "dasdsadaasdadadsadad") – Charlie Oct 05 '12 at 10:49
@Charlie: Then you can use the string comparison `[[ $n > $max ]]`. Also, you can then remove the initialization of max. – choroba Oct 05 '12 at 10:55
1

Or maybe ar[0] if there's only one element... – choroba Aug 08 '16 at 10:40
@TNT: I don't understand your comment. I used `(( n > max ))` for numbers and recommended `[[ $n > $max ]]` for **strings**. – choroba Aug 26 '16 at 11:02
@choroba Sorry, didn't read carefully. – TNT Aug 31 '16 at 11:40
There's a problem with max=0 -- what if all args are negative? Here's a better solution -- http://stackoverflow.com/a/40719447/2107205 – mato Nov 21 '16 at 11:53
@mato: fixed, thanks. – choroba Nov 21 '16 at 12:03

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 05 '12 at 10:28

4

try this:

a=(10 30 44 44 69 12 11 100)

max=0
for v in ${a[@]}; do
    if (( $v > $max )); then max=$v; fi; 
done
echo $max

result in 100

answered Oct 05 '12 at 10:28

Here's the same issue as in the answer above -- there's a problem with max=0 -- what if all args are negative? .. Here's a better solution -- https://stackoverflow.com/a/40719447/2107205 – mato Nov 21 '16 at 18:41

2 Answers2