Merging and sorting log files in Python

Question

I am completely new to python and I have a serious problem which I cannot solve.

I have a few log files with identical structure:

[timestamp] [level]         


        

Answer 1

As for the critical sorting function:

def sort_key(line):
    return datetime.strptime(line.split(']')[0], '[%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y')

This should be used as the key argument to sort or sorted, not as cmp. It is faster this way.

Oh, and you should have

from datetime import datetime

in your code to make this work.