Print longest line out of a file Ruby

Question

I am trying to print the longest line in the file 'words', which is a file with a list of words (each in a new line). With this code below, I get it to print each line that was longer than the previous compared to. However, I need it to just print the longest line out of the whole file.

I am still new with Ruby and I can't seem to find the answer on google.

max = 0
IO.foreach('words') do |line|
    if line.length > max
        max = line.length  
        print line 
    end
end

I would really appreciate your help.

Answer 1

You'll need to keep track of the longest line, and only print when done.

Something like this:

max = 0
longest = ""
IO.foreach('words') do |line|
    if line.length > max
        max = line.length  
        longest = line 
    end
end
print longest

Answer 2

一种更简洁和Ruby风格的方法是

puts IO.foreach('words').max_by(&:length)