From the information provided, I can see no need for that complex data structure (i.e. @{$myHash{$data2}{info}}).

This code produces the output you say you want:

#!/usr/bin/env perl -l

use strict;
use warnings;

use Time::Piece;

my @data;

while (<DATA>) {
    my ($date, $time, $data1, $data2) = split;
    my $key = Time::Piece->strptime("$date $time", '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M:%S'
+)->epoch;
    push @data, [$key, "$date,$time,$data1,$data2"];
}

print for map { $_->[1] } sort { $a->[0] <=> $b->[0] } @data;

__DATA__
01/14/2014 23:44:14 A Y
01/14/2014 23:44:12 B Y
01/14/2014 23:44:13 C X
01/14/2014 23:44:12 D X
[download]

Output:

01/14/2014,23:44:12,B,Y
01/14/2014,23:44:12,D,X
01/14/2014,23:44:13,C,X
01/14/2014,23:44:14,A,Y
[download]

If that doesn't do exactly what you want, it should at least provide sufficient information for you to attempt a solution yourself. If you do need further help, please ensure you post the missing details.

Here's essentially the same thing without Time::Piece.

use strict;
use warnings;

my @data;

while (<DATA>) {
    my ($date, $time, $data1, $data2) = split;
    my $key = $date . $time;

    $key =~ s{^(\d\d)/(\d\d)/(\d\d\d\d)(\d\d):(\d\d):(\d\d)}{$3$1$2$4$
+5$6};

    push @data, [ $key, join(',', $date, $time, $data1, $data2) ];
}

print map { "$_->[1]\n" } sort { $a->[0] <=> $b->[0] } @data;

__DATA__
01/14/2014 23:44:14 A Y
01/14/2014 23:44:12 B Y
01/14/2014 23:44:13 C X
01/14/2014 23:44:12 D X
[download]

Better yet, skip split() and use a single regular expression to parse the whole log record as I did here. Personally, I'd take this opportunity to improve the log records by keeping the ISO 8601 format timestamps instead of just using them as a transitory sort key.

Even Dave Rolsky sanctions using a regular expression instead of a proper timestamp parser in exactly this kind of situation. See this slide in his presentation titled A Date with Perl, which you can watch him present here.

Jim

I have no problem with your regex approach for the timestamp. The OP seemed to be asking how Time::Piece could be used for sorting, so I showed a method for doing that.

I agree that ISO 8601 format for the timestamps would be preferable.

The OP didn't show real data for "<data1> <data2>". I suspect your '(\S+) (\S+)' may well be an oversimplification of what's really required; however, no more so than my splitting on whitespace. :-)

-- Ken

(Posting anon b/c I don't have my pw saved on this browser.) Apologies, I don't know how many times I looked at your first example and it never clicked that you had them grouped by <data2>, which is indeed what I was going for. To clarify, <data2> is a client identifier, and I need to grab all log messages (<data1>) for each client , group them together by client (hence the hash of arrays with the client ID as key), and then sort each group of logs by time. I haven't tried to implement it yet, but it does indeed look like what I was trying to do. Thanks.