[SlugBug] Re: data formatting query

[Bill Best]

hi

Chris J wrote:

> And Lo! The Great Prophet Bill Best uttered these words of wisdom:

[...]

> Oh goody - a long time since I've seen a scripting question :-)
> Several ways to do this, but this seems to be the quickest with my
> knowledge:
> 
> 	awk '{ print $1, $2 }' < inputfile | grep -v '^$' | sort | uniq 

thanks - that works.  i didn't try the other methods  :o)

> By the way, I'm assuming the dates in the file are all in the same month? 
> If not, then a simple sort won't work - the format ddmmyy isn't ASCII 
> sortable: 010705 (1 July '05) will be placed above 310505 (31 May 05). The 
> date formay 'yymmdd' or even beter 'yyyymmdd' allows simple ASCII sorts of 
> dates without having to resort to convoluted or custom sort rules/routines.

you've anticipated my next question...

any quack-ish way to get the output into date order?

maybe i'll just put the output into a spreadsheet and column sort or 
something...

> Cheers,
> 
> Chris...

many thanks

bill best