Sorting a list of dates

[mcvpjd3]

Is there an equivalent of itemsort that works on Dates?

I have a list of dates that I've read in from a file (list consists of Startdate\enddate\numbers\text) and I'd like to sort the list by startdate (format is dd/mm/yyyy). Is there a command to do this or something I can do with itemsort or even a UDF tucked away somewhere that I can use?

Thanks

[dblaze1]

Could you convert the dates to a standard format like yyyymmdd then sort?

[td]

Normalizing the dates to a format suitable for sorting is a worthy suggestion. One of many ways to do this in WinBatch is the following

Code (winbatch) Select Expand


Date = ObjectType('date', '11/13/2014')


[td]

Crude example

Code (winbatch) Select Expand


lDates = '11/13/2014':@Tab:'09/01/2014':@Tab:'01/13/2013'
nDates = ItemCount(lDates, @tab)
lNorm = ''
for i = 1 to nDates
   Day = ItemExtract(i, lDates, @Tab)
   lNorm = ItemInsert(ObjectType('date', Day), i, lNorm, @LF)
next
lNorm = ItemSort(lNorm, @lf)

Message("Dates Sorted", lNorm)
exit


There are many other ways to sort by date using WinBatch.  The best approach depends on your goals, the format of the data in the file and the external tools you have at your disposal.

[mattcarl]

Sorting a list of POSITIVE numbers (pipe delimited in this example)

unsortedString =  "3|11|9|122|10"
cnt = ItemCount( unsortedString, "|")
paddedString = ""

For s= 1 to cnt
     nextValue = ItemExtract(s, unsortedString, "|")
     paddedString  =  paddedString :  StrFixLeft(nextValue,"0",6) : "|"
Next
;;;;;   padded string will be  "000003|000011|000009| etc....."

sortedString  =  ItemSort( paddedString, "|")
newString = StrReplace( sortedString,           "|0000", "|" )
newString = StrReplace( newString,           "|000", "|" )
newString = StrReplace( newString,           "|00", "|" )
newString = StrReplace( newString,           "|0", "|" )

;;;;; result    3|9|10|11|122