Sorting help

Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hellow monks,

I have the following data:

foo20021219_01.log
foo20021220_01.log
foo20021221_01.log
foo20021218_01.log
[download]

The data is in an array.
What is the best way to sort my array based on the date stamp?
I.E.

foo20021218_01.log
foo20021219_01.log
foo20021220_01.log
foo20021221_01.log
[download]

Thanks

Comment on Sorting help Select or Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Sorting help by pfaut (Priest) on Dec 31, 2002 at 14:41 UTC
This just came up yesterday. See Sorting Files with Numbers. `--- print map { my ($m)=1<<hex($_)&11?' ':''; $m.=substr('AHJPacehklnorstu',hex($_),1) } split //,'2fde0abe76c36c914586c';` [download]	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Sorting help by gjb (Vicar) on Dec 31, 2002 at 15:08 UTC
If the filenames are exactly the same form as you show them in the example, you don't even need to bother since a simple alphabetic sort (`sort @array`) will do the correct thing. Hope this helps, -gjb-	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Sorting help by hardburn (Abbot) on Dec 31, 2002 at 15:09 UTC
Use the sort function with a usersub call. The usersub can pull the numbers out of the name using a regex. The code below is untested, as always. There are probably more efficent ways of doing this, but this seems like the most straightforward way to me. `sort { $a =~ /\A\w+(\d+)_(\d+).\z/; my ($a1, $a2) = ($1, $2); $b =~ /\A\w+(\d+)_(\d+).\z/; my ($b1, $b2) = ($1, $2); ($a1 <=> $b1) or ($a2 <=> $b2); }, @array;` [download]	[reply] [d/l]