Hi Monks! I'm having trouble trying to compare 4 dates. Each row of data that i have contains 4 dates and i need to compare them and print the order. I have some sample code below.

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use warnings;
use strict;
use Data::Dumper;
use Date::Manip;

my $flag;
my $jim;
my $bob;

while (<DATA>) {
        if ( $. == 1 ) {
        print;
        next;
        }

        my $aref = [split /~/];
#print "JIM is $aref->[1],      BOB is $aref->[2]\n";

 $flag = Date_Cmp($aref->[1],$aref->[2]);
        if ($flag) {
        $jim = '1'; $bob = '2';} else {
        $bob = '1'; $jim = '2';}

        print "$aref->[0]       $jim    $bob\n";
}

__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
[download]

For the purposes of this question i added the __DATA__ but date_cmp doesn't seem to recognize the date format when i do this. When i actually return the dates from oracle and compare 2 dates date_cmp works fine. I'm explaining this because the real issue is that i'm struggling with the concept of how to compare 4 dates..not that __DATA__ doesn't recognize the date formats i added for this sample. The goal is to print output as follows:

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
[download]

Any help provided will be mucho appreciated! Thanks Tony