Finding max number in filename and opening it

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

I have files named as

energy.dat.1
energy.dat.2
energy.dat.3
...
energy.dat.2342

I would like to find the file with maximum number in the filename (ex. energy.dat.2342) and open it.

Would you please share your expertize in writing the script?

Thanks in advance.

2 
ls energy.dat.*|sort -rn|head -1
1 Like
3

I tried the command. However it gave max file number as 99 (although the folder contains thousands of file)

$ls energy.dat.*|sort -rn|head -1
energy.dat.99

Is there any way to store the file name with maximum number in a variable?
I want to open this file for plotting in octave/gnuplot/python/scilab.

Thanks you.

4

Try this:

energy.dat.* | awk -F\. 'm<$NF{m=$NF;s=$0}END{print s}'
1 Like
5

if you want it to store in a variable , just use the below command:

max_number=`ls energy.dat.*|sort -rn|head -1`
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6

A slight modification to vbe's one-liner:

ls energy.dat.* | sort -nrk1.12 | head -1
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7

Hi,
Could you please explain how that command behaved without key -k specification .
I don't have unix to test it currently

Thanks

1 Like
8

Thank you very much for your help.
I am able to get the max number in the file name.

9 
ls energy*| sort -t"." -n +2 | tail -1