Shell Programming and Scripting

i have log files that represent names, times and countries,
each name come once in country but may in diff times
i need at end each name visited which country and its [ last time of visit ]

Code:

USA | Tony | 12:25:22:431
Italy | Tony | 09:33:11:212    ****
Italy| John | 08:22:12:349 
France | Adam | 14:22:42:981
Italy | Tony | 08:22:42:212    ****
Italy | Tony | 04:22:42:212   ****
Italy | Tony | 18:22:42:212   ****
USA | Adam | 14:22:42:981

i want the output to be :

Code:

USA | Tony | 12:25:22:431
Italy | Tony | 18:22:42:212  / we discarded other as this is the latest time/ 
Italy| John | 08:22:12:349
France | Adam | 14:22:42:981
USA | Adam | 14:22:42:981

i have tired this code but it take very huge time so help me to get more smarter script or take a little time

Code:

while [1]
do 
for name in file.txt | cut -d/| -f2 | uniq -d 
do 
grep name file.txt | sort -n -k2  | tail -1 >> output.txt 
done 
done

but this script output is

Code:

Italy | Tony | 18:22:42:212   
Italy| John | 08:22:12:349
France | Adam | 14:22:42:981

which is wrong , it only get least day per name.

I just tried this with GNU sort and awk and it seems to work fine:

Code:

sort -r -k5 t3 | awk '!a[$1,$3]++'

PS: This record has no space between "Italy" and the pipe character.

Code:

Italy| John | 08:22:12:349

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