use strict; use warnings; use List::UtilsBy qw(sort_by); my $x; my @files = qw( ASR0005336_8950_ETSTexas_EOC052017P_0517_Candidate_RRD_178904_01_02_Spr17_Initial_201705040952_41044.zip ASR0004520_8960_ETSTexas_EOC052017P_0517_Candidate_RRD_178901_04_04_Spr17_Initial_201705040952_41045.zip ASR0004994_8958_ETSTexas_EOC052017P_0517_Candidate_RRD_178901_02_04_Spr17_Initial_201705040951_41043.zip ASR0005336_8950_ETSTexas_EOC052017P_0517_Candidate_RRD_178904_02_02_Spr17_Initial_201705040952_41044.zip ASR0005154_8957_ETSTexas_EOC052017P_0517_Candidate_RRD_178901_01_04_Spr17_Initial_201705040951_41042.zip ASR0005336_8959_ETSTexas_EOC052017P_0517_Candidate_RRD_178901_03_04_Spr17_Initial_201705040952_41044.zip ASR0005336_8972_ETSTexas_EOC052017P_0517_Candidate_RRD_178902_01_01_Spr17_Initial_201705040952_41044.zip ); my @sorted_files = sort_by { join( '', (split /_/, $_)[1,7,8,9]) } @files; $, = "\n"; print @sorted_files;