Thread: Sorting dates into ascending order

Hi all

I am trying to sort dates into ascending order

I currently have a structure to represent dates

Code:

struct dates{

char month[10];
int day;
int year;


};

I then have an array of type struc date, which stores each date input by the user.

My question is. How do I sort the dates into ascending order when it is input in the following format:

Jan(date.month) 10(date.day) 01(date.year)

I am not looking for code but rather an explanation as to how this can be achieved.

Thank you

Convert your struct into into an integer count of days (hours, minutes, seconds, whatever) from some starting point and sort using that value as a key. Look into [ab]using struct tm and mktime() rather than rolling your own to save you some grief.

with the standard library function qsort you can pass it an array of your structures and a pointer to a function that does the comparison. you write that function and in it you do the comparisons in the order year,month,day. the hard part is you have a string for month so you would have to translate those strings to something that gives you the order. a lookup table or something.