The easiest way I have found to do this is to turn the date and time string into a number. Split the string into day,month,year,hours,minutes,seconds and then feed that into the timelocal function from Time::Local. This will give a number that is easily sorted.
Here is a bit of code that describes this somewhat ugly and perhaps not very efficient routine:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use Time::Local;

my $test = "G: CCCCC-01 :ADD : ORDER PROCESSED : *** OK ***:08/30/2003
+:14:24:58";

my $datetemp = substr($test,index($test,"***:")+4,length($test)-index(
+$test,"***:")+4);
print "DATE & TIME: $datetemp\n";

my $date = substr($datetemp,0,index($datetemp,":"));
print "DATE ONLY: $date\n";

my $time = substr($datetemp,index($datetemp,":")+1,length($datetemp)-i
+ndex($datetemp,":"));
print "TIME ONLY: $time\n";

my @datearray = split(/\//,$date);
my @timearray = split(/:/,$time);

my $ticks = timelocal($timearray[2],$timearray[1],$timearray[0],$datea
+rray[1],$datearray[0]-1,$datearray[2]);
print "CLOCK TICKS SINCE THE EPOCH: $ticks\n";

#usage of the timelocal function
# my $time = timelocal($sec,$min,$hour,$mday,$month,$year);
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Again, this is somewhat ugly but it gets the job done in manner that is easy to understand. There is really no need to assign the variables $date and $time, I just thought it would make it easier to understand the process.