Find the longest element (most characters)
USAGE: longest arrayname var:longest
longest() { local arrayname=${1:?Array name required} varname=${2:-longest} local IFS= string longest e
Copy the array, $arrayname, to local array
eval "array=( \"\${$arrayname[@]}\" )" longest=${array[0]} for e in "${array[@]}" do [ ${#e} -gt ${#longest} ] && longest=$e done [ "$varname" != longest ] && eval "$varname=\$longest}" }