I have looked at that option briefly but as I have had problems with running the substr function, I believe it is not a practical alternative.
I need to compare the 3rd to 11th character (location) of each line with every other line, if these characters are the same, I need to compare a time (12th to 15th) character and sort all of the lines according to that time. I also need to convert the time that is in a strange format every time i read it, so this data preparation is quite time consuming, and I do not want to run it ever single time I need the value.