why invoke anything? just stay in bash: >$ cat>/tmp/file<<eoi >2 | foo | bar >4 | bar | foo >1 | bar | foo >3 | foo | bar >eoi >$ mx=;while read -r r;do r=($r);[[ $r -gt $mx ]]&&mx=$r;done</tmp/file;echo mx=$mx >mx=4 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://mailman.mn-linux.org/pipermail/tclug-list/attachments/20151121/8aa6ae9e/attachment.html>