in reply to sort timestamps with associated names.

use strict; use warnings; print sort { ($a =~ m/\S+\s+(.+)$/)[0] cmp ($b =~ m/\S+\s+(.+)$/)[0] } + <DATA>; __DATA__ vmk032 2013-07-24 11:27:38 RRsnap02 2013-07-24 12:35:35 vmk000 2013-07-22 17:16:50 vmk001 2013-07-22 20:00:36 vmk009 2013-07-23 18:21:12 vmk010 2013-07-23 18:31:00 vmk020 2013-07-23 23:30:43 vmk024 2013-07-24 03:27:30 vmk031 2013-07-24 10:27:36 vmk032 2013-07-24 11:27:38