Thanks to everyone for your info and feedback.  I wanted to avoid any
additional 'require' statements in the script so I reviewed the 'Time'
class some more.  After having reviewed all of the solutions, I came
up with my own that seems to work for both the date and time fields:

> @date_array.sort! {|a,b| Time.parse( b[ 0 ] ) <=> Time.parse( a[ 0 ] ) }     # i.e. descending sort by date

Given that I am manipulating an array of arrays that may not really
get to be more than 1,000 lines, I think this will work well enough
for now.  I would not have been able to figure it out if I hadn't had
all of your solutions to review and compare.  Thanks again.

Cheers!  Paul.


On Mar 20, 8:26 am, Robert Klemme wrote:
>
> Maybe it's the version?
>
> 13:25:57 [~]: irb
> irb(main):002:0> require 'date'
> => true
> irb(main):003:0> Date.new 0
> => #<Date: 3442115/2,0,2299161>
> irb(main):004:0> RUBY_VERSION
> => "1.8.5"
> irb(main):005:0>
>
> Kind regards
>
>         robert