Ok. First, what you show looks like text data to perl, so I'll put it in DATA and read it like it's from a file.

#!/usr/bin/perl

my @multi_array;

push @multi_array, [split] for <DATA>;
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If you're feeling adventurous, you can replace that chunk with

#!/usr/bin/perl

# my @multi_array = map {[split]} <DATA>;
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Vocation looks like it's at index 2, so we'll sort on that. Perl sort uses $a and $b as temporary storage for the two elements being compared.

my @by_vocation = sort {$a->[2] cmp $b->[2]} @multi_array;

for (@by_vocation) {
    print "@{$_}\n";
}

__DATA__
Jeff Goldblum Actor
Mary Heartman Priest
John Ericsson Mathmetician
Tony Cisneros Chef
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Jeff Goldblum Actor
Mary Heartman Priest
John Ericsson Mathmetician
Tony Cisneros Chef


How can I sort on Vocation?
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First off, I don't see any multidimensional array in your example. I just see a list of data. So let's make it a real multidimensional array:

my @data = ( [ qw(Jeff Goldblum Actor) ],
             [ qw(Mary Heartman Priest) ],
             [ qw(John Ericsson Mathmetician) ],
             [ qw(Tony Cisneros Chef) ], );
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my @sorted = map  { $_->[0] }              # Line 4
             sort { $a->[1] cmp $b->[1] }  # Line 3
             map  { [ $_, $_->[2] ] }      # Line 2
             @data;                        # Line 1
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1. Line #1 is your original list
2. Line #2 - For each element in the original list, create an anonymous array of two elements: The first element in the array is the element fed in from the original array. The second element is field 2, which is the value of Vocation, or what you wanted to sort by
3. Line #3 - Sort those anonymous arrays by field 1 (Vocation)
4. Line #4 - As those anonymous array come out of sort, remap them to the original element from the unsorted @data.

my @data = ( [ qw(Jeff Goldblum Actor) ],
             [ qw(Mary Heartman Priest) ],
             [ qw(John Ericsson Mathmetician) ],
             [ qw(Tony Cisneros Chef) ], );


my @sorted = map  { $_->[0] }              # Line 4
             sort { $a->[1] cmp $b->[1] }  # Line 3
             map  { [ $_, $_->[2] ] }      # Line 2
             @data;                        # Line 1

for ( @sorted ) {
   printf "%s %s - %s\n", @{ $_ };
}
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fappy@flux[16] perl /tmp/sortit
Jeff Goldblum - Actor
Tony Cisneros - Chef
John Ericsson - Mathmetician
Mary Heartman - Priest
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~Jeff

my @data = ('Jeff Goldblum Actor',
            'Mary Heartman Priest',
            'John Ericsson Mathmetician',
            'Tony Cisneros Chef');

use Sort::Key 'keysort';
my @sorted = keysort { (split /\s+/, $_)[2]/ } @data;
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Assuming that you have your vocation as the third word
in your array element string and ur strings delimited by exactly
one space characters this also works

@MYarray =( 'Jeff Goldblum Actor',
            'Mary Heartman Priest',
            'John Ericsson Mathmetician',
            'Tony Cisneros Chef'
           );
@MYarray = map { join " ",@{$_} } sort { $a->[2] cmp $b->[2] } map{[sp
+lit "\\s",$_]} @MYarray;
use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper(\@MYarray),"\n\n";
 
# your output should look like this ..
$VAR1 = [
          'Jeff Goldblum Actor',
          'Tony Cisneros Chef',
          'John Ericsson Mathmetician',
          'Mary Heartman Priest'
        ];
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This is great - I'm now trying to figure out how to get it to work with a comma-delimited array:

Jeff,Goldblum,Actor
Mary,Heartman,Priest
John,Ericsson,Mathmetician
Tony,Cisneros,Chef
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#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my @arr = ("Jeff Goldblum Actor", "Mary Heartman Priest", "John Ericss
+on Mathmetician","Tony Cisneros Chef") ;

print $_."\n" foreach (sort {(split(" ", $a))[2] cmp (split(" ", $b))[
+2]}@arr);
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