Sort ISO 8601 dates forward or backwards

Question

I have an array of dates in ISO8601 format and need to sort them. Does anyone have a suggestion for an algorithm that would work? I don't think they will sort as strings unless I'm much mistaken, so I assume they have to be broken down into their component parts?

Can someone post an algorithm, preferably language agnostic, but VB or C# example would work as long as it just uses strings and integers and no functions that are built-in to the language.

Thanks!

Answer 1

I don't think they will sort as strings unless I'm much mistaken,

You are much mistaken :-). They will sort as strings^†. That's one of the major plus points of ISO 8601 over other date formats.

See point 1: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601#General_principles

... The lexicographical order of the representation thus corresponds to chronological order...

^†_{as long as you aren't dealing with negative years, an you are using the same timezone and subformat i.e. you don't mix month based and week based (thanks to @paxdiablo and @whiskeysierra for pointing these out)}