hi,
im trying to find the longest word in /usr/share/dict/words that does not contain the letter i.
i've tried using the wc -L command like so: $ wc -L /usr/share/dict/words
which basically tells me the longest word which is good but how do i get the longest word which Does not contain the letter i?
does this have to be displayed in a html table by any chance?
nope. this is just from the shell command
awk '{for(i=0;++i<=NF;){if($i!~"i")a[$i]=length($i)}}END{for(i in a){if(a==max){b=i};if(a>max){max=a;delete b;b=i}};for(i in b){print i}}' file
11PM here , maybe somebody else can cook a better solution 
----------------- Update-----------------------------
This should be a better solution
awk '{for(i=0;++i<=NF;){if($i!~"i"){x=length($i);if(x==max){b[$i]};if(x>max){max=x;delete b;b[$i]}}}}END{for(i in b)print i}' file
That looks like my type of solution, long and gets the job done even if theres a shorter way
$ ruby -ne 'BEGIN{a={}};a[$_.chomp!.size]=$_ if $_ !~ /i/; END{p a.sort{|a,b| a[0]<=>b[0]}[-1]}' /usr/share/dict/words
[25, "regeneratoryregeneratress"]
Perl solution -
$
$
$ perl -lne '$x=$_ if /^[^i]+$/i && length($_)>length($x);
END {print $x}' /usr/share/dict/words
regeneratoryregeneratress
$
$
tyler_durden
thanks guys 