sort logfile by timestamp on linux command line

Use sort's --stable, --reverse, and --key options:

sort --stable --reverse --key=1,2 freeswitch.log

(For non-didactic purposes, this can be shortened to -srk1,2.)

The sort command (as you might expect) outputs each line of the named files (or STDIN) in sorted order. What each of these options does:

• The --reverse option tells sort to sort lines with greater values (later dates) higher, rather than lower. It's assumed, based on other answers, that this is what you mean by "descending" (even though this kind of sorting would normally be considered "ascending"). If you want to sort the lines in chronological order, you would omit this option.
• The --key=1,2 option tells sort to only use the first two whitespace-separated "fields" (the "freeswitch.log:"-prefixed date, and the time) as the key for sorting. It is important that you specify the last field to use, even if you are only sorting by one field (for instance, if each line kept time and date together in an ISO-8601 standard field like freeswitch.log 2011-09-08T12:21:07.282236, you would use -k 2,2), as, by default, the fields used by a key extend to the end of the line.
• The --stable option tells sort to not perform "last-resort ordering". Without this option, a line with two equal keys (as specified with the --keys option) will then be sorted according to the entire line, meaning that the filename and/or content will change the sort order of the lines.

It is important to specify both extents of the --key, as well as the --stable option. Without them, multiple lines of output that occurred at the same time (in other words, a multi-line message) would be sorted according to the content of the message (without the second field in --key) and/or the filename (without --stable, if the filename is a separate field, as described below).

In other words, a log message like this:

freeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:10.374238 Warning: Syntax error on line 20:freeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:10.374238freeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:10.374238    My[brackets(call)freeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:10.374238               ^freeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:10.374238 Suggestion:freeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:10.374238   did you forget tofreeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:10.374238   close your brackets?

would get "sorted" into:

freeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:10.374238freeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:10.374238               ^freeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:10.374238   close your brackets?freeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:10.374238   did you forget tofreeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:10.374238    My[brackets(call)freeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:10.374238 Suggestion:freeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:10.374238 Warning: Syntax error on line 20:

This is "sorted" (because "c" comes before "d", and "S" comes before "W"), but it's not in order. Specifying --stable (and keeping your --key bounded) will skip the extra sorting and preserve the order, which is what you want.

Also, sorting by this combined filename-and-date field will only work if every line in your output starts with the same filename. Given the syntax you posted, if your input has multiple, different filenames that you want to ignore in sorting, you need to use a program like sed to convert the filename to its own space-separated field, then pipe the converted lines to sort (after which you may then convert the field separators back):

sed 's/:/ /' freeswitch.log | sort -srk2,3 | sed 's/ /:/'

Note that the fields used by the key are changed to 2,3, skipping the first (filename) field.

Use sort's -k flag:

sort -k1 -r freeswitch.log

That will sort the file, in reverse, by the first key (i.e. freeswitch.log:2011-09-08 12:21:07.282236). If the filename is always the same (freeswitch.log), then it should sort by the date.

Crude but effective technique: Prefix each line with a numeric representation of the date, sort numerically, then remove the extra info.

Oneliner:

while IFS=' ' read -r name_date trailing ; do date=$(cut -d: -f2 <<<"$name_date") ; printf '%s:%s\n' $(date -d "$date" +%s) "$name_date $trailing" ; done < freeswitch.log | sort -k1 -t: | cut -d: -f2-

Shell script:

#!/usr/bin/env bashlogfile="$1"if [ -f "$logfile" ] ; then    while IFS=' ' read -r name_date trailing ; do            date=$(cut -d: -f2 <<<"$name_date")        printf '%s:%s\n' $(date -d "$date" +%s) "$name_date $trailing"    done < "$logfile" | sort -k1 -t: | cut -d: -f2-fi

Note: Requires GNU date.

If the output at this point is the reverse of what you want it is simple to pipe through tac or to modify the script to also pass -r to sort.

EDIT: I missed the part where the filename was literally on each line. Updated version will now actually work.