Hello people,
I have a file containing dated entries. Is there a way to search between dates? for example, in a file <file.text> with entries

04-jul-2005 login: pty0 xxxxxx xxxxxx
09-jul-2005 logout pty34 xxxxxx xxxxxx
11-aug-2005 arp port17 xxxxxx xxxxxx
30-sep-2005 awk line14 xxxxxx xxxxxx



In that format.

I want to search between july 9 and sep 30.

I have tried all tricks, no dice (so far). Any assistance will be appreciated

ruby -nle 'puts $_ if Time.local(*$_.split(/-| .*/).reverse).between?(Time.local(5,7,9),Time.local(5,9,30))'

It gives a syntax error.

touch -t 200507090000.00 tempStartDateFile
touch -t 200509302359.59 tempEndDateFile

find $directory -name * -newer tempStartDateFile ! -newer tempEndDateFile

That last solution assumes that I am searching for files within a directory. Actually, what I am doing is searching between different entries within a single file.

Lots of ways to do it, easy if you have the Date::Manip perl module, but without you could put the following code in a file (make it executable). and run it with the input text file as the argument.

Assumes all lines are of the format in your original post and there are no leading spaces on the lines.

#!/usr/bin/perl
%months = (
  jul => 7,
  aug => 8,
  sep => 9
);

while (<>)
{
  @a = split('-');

  if ( $months{$a[1]} == 8 ||
       ($months{$a[1]} == 7 && $a[0] >= 9) ||
       ($months{$a[1]} == 9 && $a[0] <= 30)
     )
  {
    print;
  }
}

Umm... actually, I have entries from January to december, and dating since 2003.