You can just compare the dates as strings.

The reading should be straight forward, you can use split to access the individual fields.

Since you only want to write one item per group, I'd suggest you use a hash with the group as the keys, and every time you read a line you compare if the read date is older than the current date in the hash. If yes, you replace it.


In reply to Re: Pulling out oldest entries from a text file by moritz
in thread Pulling out oldest entries from a text file by Angharad

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