#! perl -slw use warnings; use strict; use Data::Dumper; use Date::Manip; print scalar ; while () { chomp; my @dates = split '~'; my $label = shift @dates; my @order = sort{ Date_Cmp( $dates[ $a ], $dates[ $b ] ); } 0 .. $#dates; print join "\t", $label, map $_+1, sort{ $order[ $a ] <=> $order[ $b ] } 0..$#order; } __DATA__ EVENT JIM BOB SAM JACK PTRED~09/29/10 03:23:05 PM ~09/28/10 02:21:09 PM ~09/26/10 11:00:03 AM ~09/27/10 09:33:41 PM RED~08/29/10 01:55:00 AM ~08/30/09 12:10:10 PM ~08/27/10 08:16:21 PM ~09/01/10 12:12:12 AM INT~07/04/10 03:21:15 AM ~07/08/10 04:17:33 PM ~06/30/10 04:22:11 AM ~06/28/10 10:11:01 PM PTRED~06/19/10 09:19:55 PM ~04/25/10 07:39:22 PM ~09/16/10 10:34:24 AM ~07/22/10 06:19:38 PM RED~04/29/10 12:10:59 AM ~04/20/10 02:13:33 AM ~07/17/10 01:00:05 PM ~09/01/10 11:10:15 PM INT~05/23/10 11:11:11 PM ~01/08/10 10:45:12 PM ~05/15/09 03:29:37 AM ~05/18/09 12:59:59 PM #### c:\test>junk51 EVENT JIM BOB SAM JACK PTRED 4 3 1 2 RED 3 1 2 4 INT 3 4 2 1 PTRED 2 1 4 3 RED 2 1 3 4 INT 4 3 1 2