[SOLVED] How to sort data according to the date in bash?

Issue

I need to write a bash program that sorts the data according to the date and displays the name of the person who recently joined the organization.

I have an employees.txt file with data in it with delimiter |. But when I am trying to sort the data using sort command like

sort -t'|' -k5,5 employees.txt | head -1 | cut -d'|' -f2

this is only sorting according to the first column of the whole date i.e DD-MM-YYYY sorting only on DD.

employees.txt File data format

ID | NAME | POST | DEPARTMENT | JOINING DATE | SALARY

101 | Jhon McClare | Manager | Content | 23-02-2001 | 83000
102 | Alena Croft | Snr. Manager | Accounts | 01-01-2019 | 88888
103 | Jeremy | Director | Sales | 20-03-2012 | 89786
104 | Williams | Manager | Marketing | 23-06-2001 | 73000

The above image should give Alena Croft as the answer.

Solution

The relevant field be must rendered suitable for sorting, that is, in the form of YYYY-MM-DD, using a utility such as sed or awk. For example, with GNU sed:

sed -E 's/([0-9]{2})-([0-9]{2})-([0-9]{4})/\3-\2-\1/' employees.txt |
sort -r -t'|' -k5,5 | head -n1 | cut -d'|' -f2

Answered By - M. Nejat Aydin

Answer Checked By - Gilberto Lyons (WPSolving Admin)