Katkat

Find largest filename from ls -l output

IntuitSoftware Engineer · Online Assessment

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This question evaluates proficiency in text parsing, tokenization, and numeric comparison applied to command-line style output, emphasizing robust handling of varied input formats and edge cases.

You are given a multi-line string (via stdin) that represents the output of ls -l, with one entry per line.

Each file line follows the typical ls -l format:

<mode> <links> <owner> <group> <size> <month> <day> <time_or_year> <name...>

Task: print the file name (the <name...> part) of the entry with the largest <size>.

Requirements:

  • Correctly parse columns so that you read the numeric size field.
  • File names may contain spaces, so you cannot assume the name is a single token.
  • Ignore non-entry lines such as total N if present.

Output only the file name of the largest file (any tie-breaking is acceptable unless otherwise specified).