use strict; use warnings; ### Randomly generate numbers my @array; for (0..100) { my @n; push @n, (int rand 15) + 1; for (0..((int rand 3) - 1)) { push @n, int rand 15; } push @array, join '-', @n; } ### Sort the numbers my @arr = map { $_ = join '-', @$_ } sort { mysort($a, $b) } map { $_ = [split '-'] } @array; print join "\n", @arr; ### mysort does the actual comparisons sub mysort { my ($s1, $s2) = ($#{$_[0]}, $#{$_[1]}); for (0..($s1 < $s2 ? $s2 : $s1)) { no warnings; return $_ if $_ = $_[0][$_] <=> $_[1][$_]; } ### N comes before N-0 return ($s1 < $s2 ? -1 : ($s2 > $s1 ? 1 : 0)); }