[SlugBug] Re: data formatting query

[Craig Andrews]

On Thu, Dec 08, 2005 at 09:06:02PM +0000, Bill Best wrote:
> >	awk '{ print $1, $2 }' < inputfile | grep -v '^$' | sort | uniq 
> 
> >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?

Stick this in-between the grep and the sort:

perl -pe 's/(\d{2})(\d{2})(\d{2})/$3$2$1/'

The total command would be:

awk '{ print $1, $2 }' < inputfile | grep -v '^$' |\
perl -pe 's/(\d{2})(\d{2})(\d{2})/$3$2$1/' | sort | uniq

That should do the trick :)

-- 
Craig Andrews <craig at simplyspiffing.com>