Shell Programming and Scripting

I need some advice, I have live feed containing xml messages which means there is new messages every minute. I need a script that will run every 2 hours using the current time minus 2 hours ( which I able to do) However I have problem with the date formatting i.e.



One date is 27102011:15:30:00
Second date is 2710201115300


Which means when I try to compare the two dates I can't do so because of the formatting.



The first date is from the xml message which I extract using awk code, is there away to change the date format and compare the two dates.
I store the first date in variable can I store the second date in variable. Is there away to do so?


I execute the file using ./filename.ksh | awk



Is there another way to do so?



Is there a way to read this feed every 2 hours and extract the data for these to hours only?


Can someone please advice me the best way to do this.

Is this live feed replaced or extended every two hours?

just remove all non-numeric chars from the first date and compare the dates as integers. Where do you compare the dates? In shell or in awk?
If in awk:

Code:

...
myDateFromXml="27102011:15:30:00"
gsub("[^0-9]", "", myDateFromXml)

This is live feed which runs on the background, meaning it contains the data for the day and I need to run script and will get data from 2 hours minus the current time.

Sorry I am not explaining myself