CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashshellunixsh
ojhawkins
ojhawkins

Reputation: 3278

Shell script variable & loop

I want to print the largest number passed in on the command line but I am not sure how to assign a variable correctly.

What is the correct way to solve this issue?

#!/bin/sh
x=0
for var in "$@";
do 
if [ $var -gt $x ]; then
$x=$var       #this does not work
fi

done
echo "Largest number: $x"

Upvotes: 1

Views: 2268

Answers (1)

Chris Seymour
Chris Seymour

Reputation: 85765

Your mistake is $x=$var. It should be x=$var. You can think of it as $x is the value contained the in variable x so you don't want to assign to value of x but to x itself. 

#!/bin/sh
x=0
for var in "$@"; do
    if [ "$var" -gt "$x" ]; then
        x="$var"
    fi
done
echo "Largest number: $x"

Here is an alternative script using some core-utils that will work with negative numbers:

#!/bin/bash
echo "Largest: $(printf '%i\n' $@ | sort -n | tail -n 1)"

Upvotes: 3

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