Re^3: Get most recent data based on a date from an array of hashes.

[Fletch]

Your sort call just reorders your list, it does nothing to "filter" the contents. You want to take the first last item off the generated list.

Also it doesn't make much sense to use s/// to modify the string to M-D-Y to then return a different string Y-M-D. Better would be to either use just a match m// and return the new string, or to actually switch things around with the s/// and return the modified string.

## Either
$mdy =~ m{^(...blahblah...)};
return "$3-$1-$2";

## Or . . .
$mdy =~ s{^(...blahblah...)}{$3-$1-$2};
return $mdy;

## Or maybe (with a new enough perl)
return $mdy =~ s{...}{$3-$1-$2}r;

Edit: Misread the order of comparison being used in the parent sample code.

[Anonymous Monk]

Yes, but still cant get the result of the most recent date from the array:
$mdy =~ m{^(\d{1,2})\D(\d{1,2})\D(\d{4}|\d{4}\s+)}; return "$3-$1-$2";

[Fletch]

If you're sorting $a cmp $b the most recent will be in the last element rather than the first so pull out $sorted[-1] instead. The alternative is to swap the order of comparison ($b cmp $a) and then the most recent will be first.

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use 5.032;

my @dates = qw( 02-03-2003 03-01-2015 01-15-2022 );
my @sorted = sort { my $new_a = join( q{-}, (split(/-/,$a))[2,0,1] );
                    my $new_b = join( q{-}, (split(/-/,$b))[2,0,1] );
                    $new_b cmp $new_a } @dates;
say $sorted[0];

__END__
$ perl blonk.plx
01-15-2022

[Anonymous Monk]

I liked your approach to this, just one question, the code works with the dates in MM-DD-YYYY and YYYY-MM-DD, is this on this part of the code "2,0,1", that's the part I am confused with it, thanks!


#!/usr/bin/env perl

#use 5.032;
use strict;
use warnings;

use Data::Dumper;

my @dates = qw( 02-03-2003 03-01-2022 01-15-2022 01-15-2023 01-15-2001
+ 11-15-2023);
#my @dates = qw( 2003-02-03 2015-03-01 2032-01-15 2023-01-15 2001-01-1
[phone]);

print "\n\n ".Dumper \@dates;

my @sorted = sort { my $new_a = join( q{-}, (split(/-/,$a))[2,0,1] );
                    my $new_b = join( q{-}, (split(/-/,$b))[2,0,1] );
                    $new_b cmp $new_a } @dates;

print "\n\n $sorted[0]\n\n";