title: Need efficient way to sort list of strings (dates) in Scala. (Avoiding the darkness of Java.)
body: <p>I'm looking for a functional way to <strong>sort</strong> Dates in Scala. The dates come in as a list of strings and need to return as a sorted list of strings.
  The list of strings are of these formats:</p>
  
  <pre><code>"dd MMM yyyy"
  "MMM yyyy"
  "yyyy"
  ""
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I have tried setting up a regex to parse for the day, month, and year.
  I would then put them into year month day and use the .sorted .
  This would however place 1 before 10 and couldn't handle the months.
  Jan, Feb, ...</p>
  
  <p>I then tried converting the strings into date classes but I couldn't find any way to sort them.</p>
  
  <p>I have a considerable amount of data to sort. That would be the only consideration.</p>
  
  <p>Thank you,
  Erick    </p>