How can I convert string of numbers to date format?

[smcdonald20]

I have a list of dates like below:

20170201
20171201
20171225

How can I convert this into a time value that i can sort oldest to youngest?

[smcdonald20]

Thank you this worked!!

[somesoni2 · Accepted solution]

Try like this

your current search giving a field say "MyDate" | eval MyDateEpoch=strptime(MyDate,"%Y%m%d") | sort 0 MyDateEpoch