Shell Scripting

Wrote a script - that is handed a file name at the command line. The file is located in another profile and the profile location is in the script with the file name coming in as the argument. The script will read the 3rd field of each line in the file to determine which has the highest value. Then it will print that value +1 with the following text: "The new number is xxx" The script works - but I found it necessary to create a separate file "tmplist" with which to extract the third field to for comparison. So - my question is - "Is there a shorter way to write the following script  - using maybe an awk statement?"  

#!/usr/bin/perl
for $test(@ARGV) {
$counter++;
}
if ($counter != 1) {
print "You must enter a file name!\n";
}
if ($counter == 1) {
$flag = 0;
exec `cut -f3 -d":" /export/home/jones/public_html/$ ARGV[0] > "tmplist"`;
open (reader, "tmplist");
while ($line = <reader>) {
$test1 = $line;
if ($flag == 0) {
$test2 = $test1;
} # end if
$flag = 1;
if ($test2 < $test1) {
$test2 = $test1;
} #end if
} # end while
$new = $test2 + 1;
print "The new number is ";
print $new;
print "\n";
} # end if

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