note injunjoel Late to the game I see, but for the sake of TIMTOWTDI here is my suggestion. <br/>Use a [id://9108|Schwartzian Transform]. <c> use Time::Local; my %months; @months{('jan','feb','mar','apr','may','jun','jul','aug','sep','oct','nov','dec')} = 0..11; my @lines = map{ $_->[1] } sort{ $a->[0] <=> $b->[0] } map{ chomp; my $val = $_; $val =~ s#webadmin_([^\.]+)\.log#my @t=split(/_/,$1);timelocal(0,0,0,$t[1],$months{$t[0]},($t[2]-1900))#e; [$val,$_]; }<DATA>; print "$_\n" for(@lines); __DATA__ webadmin_jul_10_2007.log webadmin_jul_11_2007.log webadmin_jul_12_2007.log webadmin_jul_13_2007.log webadmin_jul_14_2007.log webadmin_jul_7_2007.log webadmin_jul_8_2007.log webadmin_jul_9_2007.log </c> The Output <c> webadmin_jul_7_2007.log webadmin_jul_8_2007.log webadmin_jul_9_2007.log webadmin_jul_10_2007.log webadmin_jul_11_2007.log webadmin_jul_12_2007.log webadmin_jul_13_2007.log webadmin_jul_14_2007.log </c> <br/><br/> -InjunJoel<br/> <!-- Node text goes above. Div tags should contain sig only --> <div class="pmsig"><div class="pmsig-277600"> "I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use." -Galileo </div></div> 627012 627012