sub sortByDate { #get dates. will look like this: date:"2015-02-16", "YYYY-MM-DD", my $aDate = $a =~ /date:\"(\d{4}\-\d{2}\-\d{2})"/; my $bDate = $b =~ /date:\"(\d{4}\-\d{2}\-\d{2})"/; return ($aDate cmp $bDate); }