Since not specified, let's assume you throw in one year's worth of reports at a time, and that you can parse the reports into a hash of hashes, so that: 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;

# reports to sort - you will need to parse existing to build HoH
my %report;

# dummy data
$report{'report_1'}{'date'} = '10/29/2001';
$report{'report_1'}{'content'} = 'whatever';

$report{'report_2'}{'date'} = '12/29/2001';
$report{'report_2'}{'content'} = 'whatever2';

$report{'report_3'}{'date'} = '4/29/2001';
$report{'report_3'}{'content'} = 'whatever3';

$report{'report_4'}{'date'} = '';
$report{'report_4'}{'content'} = 'whatever4';

# define quarters
my %quarter = (1   => 'q3',  2   => 'q3',   3  => 'q4',
               4   => 'q4',  5   => 'q4',   6  => 'q1',
               7   => 'q1',  8   => 'q1',   9  => 'q2',
               10  => 'q2', 11   => 'q2',  12  => 'q3');
               
my %sorted_reports;
for (keys %report) {
  # grab month
  if ($report{$_}{'date'} =~ m|^(\d+)|) {
    # work out quarter
    # force number - covers 01/1 inconsistancy
    my $q = $quarter{$1+0};

    # whack into hash of arrays
    push @{$sorted_reports{$q}}, $report{$_}{'content'};
  }
  else {
    # no date
    push @{$sorted_reports{'undated reports'}}, $report{$_}{'content'}
+;
  }
}

# now print (or whatever)
# note can sort because 'u' follows 'q'
foreach my $quarter (sort { $a cmp $b; } keys %sorted_reports) {
  # print quarter
  print "\n\n$quarter:\n\n";
 
  # and reports
  print join "\n\n----------\n\n", @{$sorted_reports{$quarter}};

  print "\n\n", '=' x 60;
}

[download]
cLive ;-)

In reply to Re: sorting by quarterly calendar by cLive ;-)
in thread sorting by quarterly calendar by data67

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