On Jul 3, [EMAIL PROTECTED] said:
>My hash has keys that are dates in "ddmmmyyyy" format (21Jul2001).
The date format DDMMYYYY is easily sortable (even via normal 'cmp'
comparison). Translate your dates into this format:
%mon2num = qw(
Jan 01 Feb 02 Mar 03 Apr 04 May 05 Jun 06
Jul 07 Aug 08 Sep 09 Oct 10 Nov 11 Dec 12
);
%num2mon = reverse %mon2num; # so we can go backwards, if desired
@sorted_dates =
map { s/(\d\d)(\d\d)/$1$num2mon{$2}/; $_ } # change MM -> MON
sort # sort the dates
map { s/(\D+)/$mon2num{$1}/; $_ } # change MON -> MM
@dates;
This is a Guttman-Rosler Transform (it might look like a Schwartzian
Transform, but it is not). The GRT works by finessing the data into a
form that can be sorted by simply saying sort(), and then finessing it
back to how you want.
This assumes your dates are DDMMMYYYY. If you have a DMMMYYYY (like
2Jul2001), you'll need to pad it with a 0.
--
Jeff "japhy" Pinyan [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.pobox.com/~japhy/
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