Bash Sort - How to Sort Using Timestamp

sort by datetime format in bash

Sort is able to deal with month names, thanks to the option M

No need to change , into !. Use the white space as delimiter and just issue:

LC_ALL=en sort -k7nr -k5Mr -k6nr -k2r sample

If you use this as content of the file sample:

ip=2.3.4.5, setup_time=05:59:30.260 GMT Tue Apr 1 2021, foo=moshe2, bar=haim2
ip=2.3.4.5, setup_time=05:59:30.260 GMT Tue Mar 17 2021, foo=moshe2, bar=haim2
ip=1.2.3.4, setup_time=06:58:38.617 GMT Tue Mar 16 2021, foo=moshe, bar=haim
ip=1.2.3.4, setup_time=06:58:38.617 GMT Tue Feb 28 2021, foo=moshe, bar=haim
ip=2.3.4.5, setup_time=06:50:30.260 GMT Tue Mar 18 2020, foo=moshe2, bar=haim2
ip=2.3.4.5, setup_time=06:50:30.260 GMT Tue Mar 18 2021, foo=moshe2, bar=haim2

you will get this as output:

ip=2.3.4.5, setup_time=05:59:30.260 GMT Tue Apr 1 2021, foo=moshe2, bar=haim2
ip=2.3.4.5, setup_time=06:50:30.260 GMT Tue Mar 18 2021, foo=moshe2, bar=haim2
ip=2.3.4.5, setup_time=05:59:30.260 GMT Tue Mar 17 2021, foo=moshe2, bar=haim2
ip=1.2.3.4, setup_time=06:58:38.617 GMT Tue Mar 16 2021, foo=moshe, bar=haim
ip=1.2.3.4, setup_time=06:58:38.617 GMT Tue Feb 28 2021, foo=moshe, bar=haim
ip=2.3.4.5, setup_time=06:50:30.260 GMT Tue Mar 18 2020, foo=moshe2, bar=haim2

Specifying -k7 means to sort on the seventh field. The r option reverses the order of sorting to descending. The M option sorts according the name of the month. The n option sorts numerically. To sort on the time, just consider the whole second field (beginning with the string setup_time=) as a fixed length string using -k2.

LC_ALL=en in the begin of the command line tells the system to use the English names of the months.

How to sort a file with timestamp having date and time

sort -k1,1 -k2n,2n

worked perfectly fine!

sort logfile by timestamp on linux command line

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.

Sort `.bash_history` by timestamp

Disclaimer: This might not be the most elegant and simplest solution.
However the following bash shell script snippet worked for me:

#!/bin/bash
function BashHistoryJoinTimestampLines() {
    COMMAND_WITHOUT_TIMESTAMP=TRUE
    while read line; do 
        if [ "${line:0:1}" = "#" ] # This should be a timestamp line
        then echo -ne "$line\t" # the -n option supresses the line feed
             COMMAND_WITHOUT_TIMESTAMP=FALSE
        else if [ ${COMMAND_WITHOUT_TIMESTAMP} = TRUE ]
             then echo -ne "#0\t"
             fi
             echo $line
             COMMAND_WITHOUT_TIMESTAMP=TRUE
        fi
    done 
}
#
# Example:
BashHistoryJoinTimestampLines < $HISTFILE | sort

In Unix/Linux text processing by pipelining the sort utility program by default operates on records separated by line endings.

In order to use "sort" for this application the timestamp lines have to be first joined together with the history lines containing the commands. Lines not preceeded by a time stamp will get a dummy timestamp of #0 (January 1st 1970) in this script. I've used the TAB character as a separator between timestamp and command in this script.

How to sort the files according to the time stamp in unix?

File modification:

ls -t

Inode change:

ls -tc

File access:

ls -tu

"Newest" one at the bottom:

ls -tr

None of this is a creation time. Most Unix filesystems don't support creation timestamps.

Sort logs by date field in bash

For GNU sort: sort -k2M -k3n -k4

• -k2M sorts by second column by month (this way "March" comes before "April")
• -k3n sorts by third column in numeric mode (so that " 9" comes before "10")
• -k4 sorts by the fourth column.

See more details in the manual.

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