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"