And is your question 'how do I do this in perl?' You don't say, but assume for a moment that it is.

If so, you'll find the answer to the first part of your problem by using Super Search or googling "site:Perlmonks.org max min column" (or something similar). Your question, if it's as stated in para 1, has been answered numerous times by Monks -- the most recent instance was, I think, just this week.

After that, solving the 'step value' requirement should be trivial if you have even the slightest inclination to learn Perl.

OTOH, if your question is how to do it better with shell commands, you might want to ask ShellMonks.

In reply to Re: Find highest and lowest numerical values for columns in a file by ww
in thread Find highest and lowest numerical values for columns in a file by vdb

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.