I feel kind of stupid for not realising this would work sooner. It's so damn cool, and it eats up delimiters and (some) missing stuff just fine: 
perl> '2004-09-01 17:31:45' lt '2009-05-01 19:41:31'
-> 1;
perl> '2010-09-01 17:31:45' gt '2009-05-01 19:41:31'
-> 1;
perl> '2010-09-01' lt '2009-05-01 19:41:31'
-> '';
perl> '2010-09-01' gt '2009-05-01 19:41:31'
-> 1;
perl> '2010-09-01' lt '2009-05-01 19:41:31'
-> '';

[download]
No need to bust out DateTime, or even sort+split!

In reply to Re: What is a stringwise operator? by mattk
in thread What is a stringwise operator? by blahblah

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