How to sort all files by date in ascending order

[jess_14]

Hi all,

Would like to dir and list all the files by date. However seems like the sorting is on alphabetical order instead of the date.

dir *.exe /date

The date is mixed up, not sorting from the oldest to the current 1.

Is there any command that could help? Thanks!

[Robert Gezelter]

Jess,


It is a multi-step process:

- produce the list of all files in a format that can be sorted (e.g., DIRECTORY/BRIEF/NOHEAD/NOTRAIL/DATE/OUTPUT=)

- the resulting output will be a file of two-line entries; reformat the entries into single lines (my preference would be "date" followed by "filename")

- use SORT to sort the resulting file.

This process is far simpler if one temporarily sets the process' time/date format to a collating friendly format (if memory recalls correctly, details are in Section 27.6 of the Programming Concepts manual, available from the HP OpenVMS WWW site at http://www.hp.com/go/openvms.

One could also do this using pipes. My description assumes no particular version of OpenVMS.

- Bob Gezelter, http://www.rlgsc.com

[Shriniketan Bhagwat]

Hi Jess,

Yes, output of $ DIR command is based on the alphabetical order. And you need to write the script to meet your requirement.

Regards,
Ketan

[shahina shaik]

Hi,

Try using DIRE/DATE=CREATED will have a display in serial order then using the output we can sort it out using script.

Regards,
Shahina

[Joseph Huber_1]

We had such a discussion here (or in c.o.v ?) sometime ago.
Results are in one of my DCL procedures:

http://wwwvms.mppmu.mpg.de/vms$common/com/dir_by_date.com
or
http://wwwvms.mppmu.mpg.de/vms$common/com/dir_by_date2.com

OR
look for QDSB* in
http://www.quadratrix.be/downloads

[Hein van den Heuvel]

Jesse, did you search at all?

google: +openvms +date +sorted +directory optionally add: +site:itrc.hp.com

finds:

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1190275

which reads..

You can tell sort a magic collating sequence to get the (english) months right.
See old topic (1996) in c.o.v

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.vms/search?hl=en&group=comp.os.vms&q=hein+collating_sequence

Or more recently here:

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1095459


And finally, here is a perl 'one liner':

$ perl -e "while (<*.tmp;*>) { $f{$_}=-M } foreach $x (sort {$f{$b}<=>$f{$a}} keys %f){ print qq($x\n)}"

That was sorted on modification date, new to old. For new to old switch the $a and $b around.

Cheers,
Hein.


$ pipe dir/col=1/wid=fil=55/nohead/notrai/date | sort/spec=sort_by_date.sort sys$pipe sys$output

----------- sort_by_date.sort -----------
/collating_sequence=
(
sequence=("AN","EB","AR","PR","AY","UN","UL","UG","EP","CT","OV","EC",
" ","0"-"9"),
fold
)
! second and third letters of each month

/field=(name=year,pos:65,size:4)
/field=(name=month,pos:62,size:2) ! start at SECOND letter
/field=(name=day,pos:58,size:2)
/field=(name=time,pos:70,size:11)
! assume "14-OCT-1986 09:14:46.00" at position 58
/key=(year,descending)
/key=(month,descending)
/key=(day,descending)
/key=(time,descending)

[Joseph Huber_1]

Correct link for the quadratix qdsb program:

http://www.quadratrix.be/qdsb.html

[P Muralidhar Kini]

Hi Jess,

>> However seems like the sorting is on alphabetical order instead of the date.
Yes, the DIR command always displays the files in the directory in
alphabetical order of filenames. This is the behavior in VMS.

Even if you give a selection criteria such as "/SINCE" or "/BEFORE",
the names would eventually get displayed in alphabetical order of filenames
itself.

>> Is there any command that could help?
No direct command.
As others have suggested, you need to write a command procedure for this.
it would be 2 step procedure.
* First step would be to get the output of DIR command with "/SINCE" or
"/BEFORE" qualifier. Take this output to a file.
* Second step would be to sort the output file based on the date.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Murali

[Joseph Huber_1]

BTW a caveat:

All procedures using the output of a DIRECTORY command for sorting have a problem if file-specifications are longer than the space available in the DIR output (the /width=filename=n).
Directory the wraps the rest of the output to a second line, and sort will be confused.

My dir_by_date2.com avoids this trap (but the output is a bit unusual with the date in front of the file-name).

[Joseph Huber_1]

and of course with GNV simply:

ls -lt
ls -ltr

[P Muralidhar Kini]

Hi Joseph,

>> Directory the wraps the rest of the output to a second line,
>> and sort will be confused.
Thats a good point.
The parsing routine has to consider this scenario that a filename can get
displayed in multiple lines and needs to be able to handle that.

Also another thing to consider (may not be in this case),
When parsing a line of DIR output, program cannot check directly for any
known characters like "(" and so on. i.e. it cannot rely on the fact that
the "(" ... is a delimiter. These characters can be a part of the filename
(ODS5 filenames allows that). The program needs to be take care of this.

Regards,
Murali

[John McL]

One day maybe HP will add a /SORT=x capability to $ DIRECTORY and let us sort by filesize, by any date and by (what else?), of course with the default being by filename ... but it's not available yet.

[P Muralidhar Kini]

John,Jess

>> One day maybe HP will add a /SORT=x capability to $ DIRECTORY
Let me know if there is any business requirement for availability of this feature.
I can add this to the wish list along with the supporting text.

Regards,
Murali

[Kris Clippeleyr]

> One day maybe HP will add a /SORT=x
> capability to $ DIRECTORY and let us sort
> by filesize, by any date and by (what
> else?), of course with the default being
> by filename ... but it's not available
> yet.

It's already there. Check out QDSB (as Joseph already pointed out) at
http://www.quadratrix.be/qdsb.html

Regards,
Kris (aka Qkcl)

[P Muralidhar Kini]

Hi Kris,

>> It's already there. Check out QDSB (as Joseph already pointed out) at
>> http://www.quadratrix.be/qdsb.html
Yes, thats right. I missed seeing this before.

I did a quick instal and checked it out.
It provides the feature which sorts and displays entries in the directory based
on name, creation date, type and so on.
Nice tool.

Jess,
The QDSB tool gives you the feature that you are looking for.
In case you have not already started using it, you can start now.

Regards,
Murali

[Shriniketan Bhagwat]

Hi Kris,

Even I have also tried this tool.
This is really a nice tool. Thanks for letting us to know about such a good tool.

Regards,
Ketan

[Joseph Huber_1]

And since I work on a linux desktop, I got used to use the "ls" command on VMS as well.
My above reply to use GNV ls -lt, ls -ltr means:
either define
bash :== $GNU:[bin]bash (GNV$GNU:[BIN] for newer versions of GNV)
or have GNU:[bin] in Your DCL$path logical list.

Then define the DCL ls command as
ls == "bash -c ""ls"
(sic ! the missing double quote at the end is intended).
Through the "bash -c" call ls works with (unix-style) wildcards, while a direct "ls := $GNU:[bin]ls" will not work with wildcards.

In a similar fashion other bash shell commands can be defined:
$ rm == "bash -c ""rm"
$ cat == "bash -c ""cat"
$ gdiff == "bash -c ""diff"
$ grep == "bash -c ""grep"
$ egrep == "bash -c ""egrep"
$ fgrep == "bash -c ""fgrep"
$ touch == "bash -c ""touch"

"cd" cannot be used like this, because it is a bash internal command.

[Keith Cayemberg]

Sorting DIRECTORY by modification date

[posted to comp.os.vms by Peter Weaver (WeaverConsultingServices@sympatico.ca) on 29-APR-2004]

$ ASSIGN LIB$DATE_FORMAT_037,-
LIB$TIME_FORMAT_001 -
LIB$DT_FORMAT/USER_MODE
$! Ignore any DIR symbols
$ directx -
/date=modified-
/width=(file:80,display:132)-
/out=out.txt
$ sort out.txt -
/key=(pos:83,siz:22) tt:

should do it as long as someone with privileges did the @SYS$STARTUP:LIB$DT_STARTUP first.

[Hoff]

Install and configure GNV.

$ bash
ls -tla

[P Muralidhar Kini]

Hi Jess,

I hope you are using (might have become expert :)) the QDSB tool by now.

Also, Refer the following link which says how you can thank the forum -
http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/helptips.do?#28

Regards,
Murali