Comparing multiple files and printing larger values along with filenames

Question

I have about 2000 files in the following format:

FILEA: WHWH-19975612.txt

0.1   70  30
0.01  70  32
0.9   72  32
...

FILEB: WHWH-20004526.txt

0.2   70 30
0.001 70 32
1.0   72 32
...

Desired output

0.2  70 30  WHWH-20004526
0.01 70 32  WHWH-19975612
1.0  72 32  WHWH-20004526
...

Doing this will keep track of files where larger values are present, which I can call for further processing.

Answer 1

As long as the number of files fits into one call to awk, you can do:

awk '{ if ($1 > maxvalues[$2" "$3]) { 
         maxvalues[$2" "$3]=$1; 
         maxfiles[$2" "$3]=FILENAME; 
       }
     } 
     END { 
       for (i in maxvalues) printf "%-4s %5s %s\n", maxvalues[i], i, maxfiles[i] 
    }' \
    *

I created a test set of files with your sample data, and then by running:

for((i=20004527;i<20006526;i++))
do 
  cp WHWH-20004526.txt WHWH-${i}.txt
done

... to create ~2000 data files to work with.