Finding the longest line of a document

Question

I am looking for a program that can find the longest line of a .txt file. It should run on Microsoft Windows. Any license or price is fine.

Answer 1

I am looking for a program that can find the longest line of a .txt file. It should run on Microsoft Windows.

I've listed two free solutions below that may suffice for your need.

Method 1

You could use: wc -L "c:\folder\file.txt" from the CoreUtils for Windows for example if you just need the number of the length of the longest line in that file—this is a freebie too.

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Method 2

You can do this in Windows with PowerShell as well for a particular file:

Note: The -ReadCount 3000 parameter reads the file in chunks of 3000 lines, reducing memory usage for large files. Adjust the value based on your system's performance and file size for optimal results.

1. Get the maximum length number of a record in a file—not optimized for large files:

Get-Content "c:\folder\file.txt" | Measure-Object -Property length -Maximum | Select-Object Maximum;

2. Get the maximum length number of a record in a file—optimized for large files:

$maxLength = 0;
Get-Content "c:\folder\file.txt" -ReadCount 3000 | ForEach-Object {
    $_ | ForEach-Object {
        $length = $_.Length;
        if ($length -gt $maxLength) {
            $maxLength = $length;
        }
    }
};
$maxLength;

3. Get the content of the longest line/record in a file—not optimized for large files:

Get-Content "c:\folder\file.txt" | Sort-Object -Property length | Select-Object -last 1;

4. Get the content of the longest line/record in a file—optimized for large files:

$maxLine = ""
Get-Content "c:\folder\file.txt" -ReadCount 3000 | ForEach-Object {
    $_ | Sort-Object -Property length | Select-Object -Last 1 | ForEach-Object {
        if ($_.Length -gt $maxLine.Length) {
            $maxLine = $_;
        }
    }
};
$maxLine;

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Further Resources

• Get-Content
• Select-Object
• Measure-Object
• Sort-Object

Answer 2

You can add an extension to Notepad++ to perform this operation. See this answer on SuperUser for details