sub sortByDate
{
 #get dates. will look like this: date:"2015-02-16",  date:"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);
}

##</code><code>##

{ date:"2015-03-01", content:"asdf" }


{ date:"2015-05-01", content:"erwa" }
{ date:"2015-01-02", content:"erts" }

{ date:"2014-04-02", content:"w34r" }

##</code><code>##

#!/user/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;


# open file
open (MYFILE, '<jsonfile.json') or print ("Can't open file.");

# pull into list
my @events = <MYFILE>;

# close file
close (MYFILE);

# organize by date
sub sortByDate
{
 #get dates. will look like this: date:"2015-02-16",  date:"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);
}

@events =  sort sortByDate @events;

&printDates;
<code>

<p>When run, I get</p>

<code>



2015-03-01
2015-05-01
2015-01-02
2014-04-02