Shell variables set inside while loop not visible outside of it

Question

I am trying to find the pathname with the most characters in it. There might be better ways to do this. But I would like to know why this problem occurs.

LO         


        

Answer 1

About finding the longest pathname. Here's an alternative:

find /usr/share/zoneinfo | while read line; do
    echo ${#line} $line 
done | sort -nr | head -n 1

# Result:
58 /usr/share/zoneinfo/right/America/Argentina/ComodRivadavia

Forgive me if this is considered off topic, I hope it helps someone.