UNIX Command Line

names.txt is file with the following format:

FirstName|LastName|DOB|Location

Intention: Find the longest LastName (2^nd field) among all the entries.

$ cat names.txt
Anish|Saikia|1982|India
Jack|King|1978|London
Rajesh|Gupta|1980|India
Steve|Spitzer|1977|Scotland
Lias|Hazarik|1983|India

The Code:

$ awk ' BEGIN { OFS=FS="|"; cur=max=0; seen=""}
{
cur = length($2)
if (cur > max ) {
seen = $2 "(" $1" "$2 " from " $NF")"
max = cur
} else if (cur == max) {
seen = seen "\n" $2 "(" $1" "$2 " from " $NF")"
}
}
END { print seen }' names.txt

Output:
Spitzer(Steve Spitzer from Scotland)
Hazarik(Lias Hazarik from India)