Sorting returns not quite predictable results

Hi All

I thought I was on to a winner there with Svvc's post but we've got slightly different issues


I have a file with 4 columns that include a date column I'm trying to sort. Unfortunately, the results aren't quite what I was looking for.

This is a sample of the input in the Source file.

09/26/2006,6.2,EUR/ILS,0.085841732
08/01/2006,7.4,GBP/ILS,0.079604097
12/02/2005,4.5,USD/ILS,0.064793205
03/31/2006,4.62,USD/ILS,0.055062438
12/30/2005,4.46,USD/ILS,0.06492932
01/31/2008,5.05,USD/ILS,0.06261755
12/27/2007,4.5,USD/ILS,0.064475983

my sort command is as follows

sort -r -u -t '/' -k 3 FILE > FX (I also tested without -r)

This almost works except the result provides days that are descending rather than ascending. My result looks like this

< 12/30/2005,4.46,USD/ILS,0.06492932
< 12/02/2005,4.5,USD/ILS,0.064793205
< 03/31/2006,4.62,USD/ILS,0.055062438
< 09/26/2006,6.2,EUR/ILS,0.085841732
< 08/01/2006,7.4,GBP/ILS,0.079604097
< 12/27/2007,4.5,USD/ILS,0.064475983
< 01/31/2008,5.05,USD/ILS,0.06261755

as opposed to

< 12/02/2005,4.5,USD/ILS,0.064793205
< 12/30/2005,4.46,USD/ILS,0.06492932
< 03/31/2006,4.62,USD/ILS,0.055062438
< 08/01/2006,7.4,GBP/ILS,0.079604097
< 09/26/2006,6.2,EUR/ILS,0.085841732
< 12/27/2007,4.5,USD/ILS,0.064475983
< 01/31/2008,5.05,USD/ILS,0.06261755


Any ideas as always would be greatly appreciated..

Thanks in Advance

Try this out:



That'll sort by year, than by month, and finally by day starting with the earliest date available.

If you want the dates in the reverse order, starting with he latest date available, just do as follows:



There might be a less cluttered command line to do this, but that worked for me!

Ugh, just realized a big flaw in the command line I posted above. It's OK, I just forgot to account for the additional numbers after the date. They were screwing the sort up. Try this one instead:



That'll do the trick. Sorry for the misleading reply above!

That did the trick indeed. I had a variation on the sort command you used but that was not quite working. Yours did the trick. Much appreciation..

Thanks