in reply to sorting by month within year

If the file dates span 1999 .. 2000, then you'll have a tiny bit of additional work to do beyond the good suggestions above.

But why not think out of the box? Can the problem be pushed upstream? Are the filenames a given, or can they be renamed? If they can be renamed, go for YYYYMM (or YYYYYMM if you want to be Y10K compatible :)