Comments on: Linux / UNIX Shell: Sort Date

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:27:27 +0000

This has been a great help, but for some reason when I go to sort it will only sort one part of the date , the DD, the MM or the YYYY but never more than one. The only difference in my code is that instead of a space delimiter I have a comma so I added the -t”,” part to the code, any ideas why mine isn’t working?

By: Kevin

Kevin — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 15:37:39 +0000

I’m working through a similar sorting problem. Where I get stuck is getting the sorted output to sort on the am and pm data. looking at your output it looks like the same issue. ie: on the last table on 11/12/2008 2pm comes before 10am. i have tried sorting the am/pm part first but with no luck. any ideas?

By: Richard

Richard — Sat, 23 Apr 2011 17:57:50 +0000

Thanks for this usefull tip (especially the -kx.y notation)

By: Anthony Thyssen

Anthony Thyssen — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 03:32:22 +0000

That is not the ISO format
2008-12-25
is the ISO date format, but that is still sortable.

By: Ace

Ace — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 21:21:38 +0000

@harry
Agree about that.

By: harry

harry — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 21:27:50 +0000

of course, if people started using ISO data format e.g. “20081225″ to store and export the date, it would simplify their sorting immensely. Well, for dates anyway ;’)

By: vivek

vivek — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 18:32:16 +0000

Dan,

-M will only compare month if they are in following format i.e. a month name abbreviation:
JAN
FEB
MAR
…
..
DEC

HTH

By: Dan Shumaker

Dan Shumaker — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 17:08:24 +0000

Umm, you say it’s the -M option and then you don’t use -M as an option. That’s funny.