Sort logs by date field in bash

For GNU sort: sort -k2M -k3n -k4

little off-topic - but anyway. only useful when working within filetrees

ls -l -r --sort=time

from this you could create a one-liner which for example deletes the oldest backup in town.

ls -l -r --sort=time | grep backup | head -n1 | while read line; do oldbackup=\`echo $line | awk '{print$8}'\`; rm $oldbackup; done;

linux bash sorting scripting awk

days need numeric (not lexical) sort, so it should be sort -s -k 2M -k 3n -k 4,4

See more details here.

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