Sort with Text Months - perl

Question

Not sure the best way to accomplish this.
I get these results to a text file from a mysql query. I would like to the sort 4th column with the oldest entry first.
10.xxx.xxx.xxx 70:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Wed Apr 3 17:00:52 2013 Mon Apr 15 09:42:33 2013
10.xxx.xxx.xxx 70:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Mon Apr 8 14:01:05 2013 Mon Apr 15 09:42:33 2013
10.xxx.xxx.xxx 70:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Fri Apr 5 13:00:56 2013 Mon Apr 15 09:42:33 2013
10.xxx.xxx.xxx 70:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Mon Apr 8 08:00:59 2013 Mon Apr 8 08:00:59 2013 10.xxx.xxx.xxx 70:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Thu Mar 28 14:15:12 2013 Fri Apr 5 09:00:55 2013
10.xxx.xxx.xxx 70:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Thu Mar 28 14:15:12 2013 Fri Apr 5 07:00:53 2013
sort -r -k10 test does not seem to cut it.

Answer 1

A Perl solution using Time::Piece (in the Perl standard library since 5.10.0) and a Schwartzian Transform.
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use 5.010;
use Time::Piece;
say map { $_->[0] }
sort { $a->[1] cmp $b->[1] }
map { [ $_, sortdate($_) ] } <DATA>;
sub sortdate {
my $date = join ' ', (split)[2 .. 6];
return Time::Piece->strptime($date, '%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y')->datetime;
}
__END__
10.xxx.xxx.xxx 70:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Wed Apr 3 17:00:52 2013 Mon Apr 15 09:42:33 2013
10.xxx.xxx.xxx 70:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Mon Apr 8 14:01:05 2013 Mon Apr 15 09:42:33 2013
10.xxx.xxx.xxx 70:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Fri Apr 5 13:00:56 2013 Mon Apr 15 09:42:33 2013
10.xxx.xxx.xxx 70:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Mon Apr 8 08:00:59 2013 Mon Apr 8 08:00:59 2013
10.xxx.xxx.xxx 70:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Thu Mar 28 14:15:12 2013 Fri Apr 5 09:00:55 2013
10.xxx.xxx.xxx 70:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx Thu Mar 28 14:15:12 2013 Fri Apr 5 07:00:53 2013

Answer 2

#ECHO OFF
SETLOCAL ENABLEDELAYEDEXPANSION
(
FOR /f "tokens=1-7*" %%a IN (sqlout.txt) DO (
SET "month="
FOR %%m IN (01 Jan 02 Feb 03 Mar 04 Apr 11 Nov 12 Dec) DO IF NOT DEFINED month (
IF %%d==%%m SET month=!prev!
SET prev=%%m
)
SET /a day=100+%%e
ECHO(%%g!month!!day!%%f*%%a %%b %%c %%d %%e %%f %%g %%h
)
)>tempfile.1
(
FOR /f "delims=" %%i IN ('sort tempfile.1') DO (
SET line=%%i
ECHO(!line:**=!
)
) >sortedoutput.txt
DEL tempfile.1 /F /Q
On the sample data, there are 8 significant columns. Of these, the fourth is month, fifth date, sixth time and seventh year. I have no idea what you mean by the "fourth" column being "the" date since there are two separate dates in each line.
The process simply picks up the fourth column and looks through a list of month numbers (2-digit) and month abbreviations. It's easier to save the previous element for use when the next is compared, so when the monthname matches the fourth column in %%d, the month variable is set, and that will turn off any further processing of the month.
You may have noticed I've not listed all of the months This gives you something to do. It obviously won't work unless all of the months are entered in the list.
Next we deal with the fifth column, and add 100 to the day number, producing a number from 101 to 131. These numbers all have three characters.
Next we ECHO out a string of
the year from column 7 in %%g
the 2-character month number in month
the 3-digit augmented day number
the time from column 6
an asterisk
each of the elements of the original line
Next step is to read each of those lines after sorting.
set the sorted line into line
echo everything from line except the part up to the first asterisk.