longest string by field 1

[marsd]

I have a problem that is kind of elusive::I have been trying to solve it in various ways but none seem to work 100%.

I have a tab delimited flat file with n fields, and any number of records.
I need the longest string length for each field and I need a clean summary, by field, of the longest string in that field printed to stdout.
I'm no novice to awk anymore and can do this easily by field individually, but in aggregate it poses a problem.
Does anyone have a quick solution for this?

Thanks

 

[vgersh99]

BEGIN {
FS="\t"
}

{
for(i=1; i <= NF; i++)
if (length($i) > length(arr))
arr=$i
}

END {
for (i in arr)
printf(&quot;field->[%d] LongestValue->[%s]\n&quot;, i, arr);
}

vlad

 

[marsd]

Geez that was easy, I made it way too complicated.
Thanks