sorting by date senile?

[Wouter]

On 09 Mar 2005, at 15:45, xbury.cs at clearstream.com wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> Im trying to sort a list of dates - nothing hard right?
>
>   set itemdelimiter to tab
>    sort lines of fld "dateIndex" datetime descending by item 1 of each
>
> The dates are in item 1 - no prob.
> The dates are tested with month before or after... (all days are set 
> to 1)
>
> But what I get is this! (or backwards!) - never mind the 2nd, 3rd
> columns...
>
> 01/10/1932      173310  2
> 01/10/1908      173310  2
> 01/09/1908      9523814 2
> 01/06/1908      419840  1
> 01/01/2004      2415830 11
> 01/05/2003      6293645 115
> 01/01/2000      5664075122      42593
> 01/12/1999      6476478340      39207
> 01/12/1998      3215445 1245
>
> Is this a bug? I tested this in MC first and thought this was an old 
> but
> but after testing it in RR 2.5 and get the same wacky result!
>
> cheers
> Xavier
>

Hi Xav,

This is probably due to the dates < 1970.
Dates from 1970 on up to 2032 will sort correctly by your syntax.
You will have to do some math, but you are good at that ;-)

Gr W.