It populates an array with the dates; sorts the indices of the array, by the (ascending) values of the dates indexed; then adds one to the ordered indices to produce your "ranking value".

But the 'ranking value' is really the date itself: the earliest date is 'first place', the latest date is 'fourth place' (in the OPed example data). It's necessary to convert each date, at some point, into its 'place' from 1 to n.

Once the ordered dates have been converted to place values, they have to be restored to the original order of the 'players' Jim .. Jack for printing.

In reply to Re^2: Need help comparing 4 dates (sort errors?) by AnomalousMonk
in thread Need help comparing 4 dates by dirtdog

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