Perl script to find biggest number in column then print out that number and corresponding value in other column

Question

I have a file, lets call it file.txt File is as follows....

First Last Age Years
John  M    30  2.0
Alex  K    21  3.0
Carl  G    58  4.0

I am trying to write a Perl script that will add the corresponding rows in the "Age" and "Years" columns then print the name corresponding to the largest number. Example output would be "Carl G at 62 years old". The "62" comes from adding 58 and 4.0. I've done this with awk...

 awk
{name=$1 OFS $2 OFS "at" OFS }
NR>1 {age = $3 + $4}
age>ageMax {ageMax = age; data = name; next}
age == ageMax {data = data ageMax ORS name}
END {
print data ageMax}

Can this be done with a perl script?

Answer 1

No doubt that this problem can be solved in Perl.

Following code sample demonstrates how desired result can be achieved

use strict;
use warnings;
use feature 'say';

my @header = split(' ', <DATA>);
my $max_age = 0;
my $found;

while( <DATA> ) {
    my($first,$last,$age,$years) = split;
    my $sum = $age+$years;
    $found  = "$first $last at $sum years old"
        if $sum > $max_age;
    $max_age = $sum;
}

say $found;

__DATA__
First Last Age Years
John  M    30  2.0
Alex  K    21  3.0
Carl  G    58  4.0

Output

Carl G at 62 years old

Reference: split