I have to send a file to mainframe and before sending it, I have to execute the quote command to set the record length.
Since the file is dynamic, I do not know what the maximum size of a line could be.

Currently, I use the following function to get the Max Column Count. Since I use "sed" it takes a long time for big files.

GetMaxCols()
{
MAX_COL_SIZE=0
for line in `cat $1 | sed "s! !~!g"`
do
COL_COUNT=`echo $line | wc -c`
if [ "$COL_COUNT" -gt "$MAX_COL_SIZE" ]; then
MAX_COL_SIZE=$COL_COUNT
fi
done
echo $MAX_COL_SIZE
}

Any better ways to achieve this goal ?

Thanks in advance.

No 'wc -L'?

awk '{if (length()>max) max=length()}; END {print max}'

I prefer the awk solution as well. But if you used a shell loop, the following ksh code should be very efficient (and it handles multiple embedded spaces, so you don't need to mass change them to something else).

maxlen=0
while read line
do
len=${#line}
((len>maxlen)) && maxlen=$len
done < $1
echo "maxlen=$maxlen"

What about leading whitespace Jim? ;-)

Drat! Thanks for pointing that out Wolfbone.

That solution needs one extra command:

IFS=
maxlen=0
while read line
do
len=${#line}
((len>maxlen)) && maxlen=$len
done < $1
echo "maxlen=$maxlen"

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