use 5.010; use List::MoreUtils qw( sort_by ); my @PCHR = qw( K Q R B N P ); my %pchr = map { $PCHR[$_] => $_ } 0..$#PCHR; my $w1 = 'QRKPNB'; my $w2 = join '', sort_by { $pchr{$_} } split( //, $w1 ); say "$w1 -> $w2";