[PLUG] sorting by date without stat

[Jeff Abrahamson <jeff@diderot.purple.com>]

I want to be able to sort my photos by date. But I might rotate them
or do other transforms that changes the modification date set by my
camera. So I typically encode the date and time of the photo in the
name of the photo. (For an example of how to do this, see my script
new-image at <http://www.purple.com/GPL/>.)

The thing is, I want the file names to have the following properties:

- start with natural language, so I never have to start by typing
  numbers.

- encode the date in human readable form.

(I've got those two.)

- Allow for sorting by date, even through an eval or backtick
  expression. I can't count on `ls -t`, because I might have rotated the
  images or, at some distant point in the future, copied to a new file
  system and accidentally lost mtime info.

I could just encode unix time, which is ok for the next thirty years
or so. But it seems cumbersome. Already I've got long files names like

    jim_waterfall_buttes_chaumont__Sat-19-May-2001_14:08.jpg

I guess I could do

    jim_waterfall_buttes_chaumont__990225432__Sat-19-May-2001_14:08.jpg

(I made up that mtime number. Disturbingly, I did a good job.)

It's just ugly and fails any concept of normal form. I'm wondering if
someone has a better idea. Perhaps I should just parse the trailing
date. There must be an easier way, since in the end, then, I need a
program that takes a bunch of these file names and dumps on stdout a
permutation of those names that is time sorted.

As I ask the question, I hear the answer: parse it and get over it.

-- 
 Jeff

 Jeff Abrahamson  <http://www.purple.com/jeff/>



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