ac> Can you elaborate on the 'sorting' bit a little more?  (eg. how does it 
ac> make it any easier to sort dates in the format YYYY-MM-DD than sorting 
ac> dates in the format DD-MM-YYYY ?)

I've just made a whole stack of share prices available, FREQ
AUSSTOCK.ZIP from 3:711/934.  The date format is YYMMDD.  As
part of the process of creating it, I sort it.  The file is
more than 64k in size, so I can't use OS/2's sort command.
Fortunately my brother-in-law has made a cut-down version of
sort, called xysort, that is purely memory-based.  A simple
xysort yyy was all I needed.  His program doesn't allow
me to start on another character.  Much easier.  BFN.  Paul.
@EOT:

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