Hi,

I have a list of files that take on the format ABCDE_yymmdd and wish to sort them in ascending date order. I can't use the unix time stamp for the file as this could possibly be different from the date given in the file name.

Does anyone know of any way this can be done using unix shell scripting and/or awk(nawk)?

What i already have:

constructFileList()
{

if [ -f $DataDir/$FileListFile ]
then
rm -f $DataDir/$FileListFile
fi

for FILE in `ls -1 $DataDir/ABCDE_??????.dat`
do
echo $(basename $FILE)|nawk -f sort.awk
done |sort|while read FILENAME
do
echo ${FILENAME#??????} >> $DataDir/$FileListFile
done
}

The sort.awk script:

function prisort(STRING)
{
return_str = substr(STRING,11,2) substr(STRING,9,2) substr(STRING,7,2) STRING
return return_str
}

#Main Routine
{
print prisort($1)
}

Thanks

Wow, impressive, so much easier than what i was doing thanks anbu23, can you just give a brief explanation of what the -t "_" -k2 does, i would like to understand what I am using so I can build my knowledge.

Edit: I think i get what the -t option is for, to spilt the string to be able to sort on just the date part?

Thanks.

LiquidChild,
For the "sort" command:
-t --> specifies the field separation.
-k --> specifies the field sequence.

If you type: man sort
you can see a full explanation of the "sort" command in your system.

-t char
Use the single character char as the default field separator, instead of the default of whitespace.

-k
Define the sort key field.

This does not seem to work in the following though

FILE_230580.ok
FILE_230590.ok
FILE_010107.ok

As the ordering is then:

FILE_010107.ok
FILE_230580.ok
FILE_230590.ok