I did, but there's ALOT to look through... I tried:
sort -n numbers | sed -n 1p numbers > largest
sort -n numbers | sed -n 1p > largest

Neither worked... I'll keep trying!

I created a file (num) with 5 numbers.
One example prints the LAST line
The second example does a reverse sort and prints the FIRST line.

You will find all this in the man pages and other documents.

Out of curiosity: what WERE the results of those commands
of yours, what did you get in the file 'largest'? I would
have expected the last one to work.


Cheers,
Tink

I didn't think it needed further explanation.

Sort so the largest value is the last line. Pipe that to tail to copy just the last line to the destination file.

Well the program won't allow me to tinker with its insides (it's basically a program where you write in the answer and won't let you do anything else). Anyway I made a file to try this out myself, within numbers I had:
8
32
21
31
500
43

And when I used 'sort -n numbers | sed -n 1p > largest' it ended up being exactly the same.


When I used 'sort -n numbers | sed -n 1p > largest' the result in 'numbers' was 8. So it seems that my sort command isn't working, which makes no sense to me as it looks fine. Any idea on what's wrong?
Sadly it seems I have an inherit need to make things as complicated as possible, I'll try that out.

I feel like I have stepped into the twilight zone.....

sort -n puts the largest value last. So sed '1p' will give you the smallest value. Is your system somehow different???

EDIT---maybe "sort" is aliased to something else????

Nuh .. it's all good, we're both blind :}

It does exactly what we tell it to. Sort gives him 500 as the
last, but with sed we print the first line only, which will be
the smallest number - 8 in his case. The "trick" would be to
actually do the $p rather than 1p ;}


Cheers,
Tink