#!perl use strict; use warnings; use Benchmark; my @array = ( '04=critical', '02=informational', '01=unknown', '10=test', '03=warning', '08=foo', ); sub substr_num { @_ = sort { substr($a, 0, 2) <=> substr($b, 0, 2) } @array; } sub substr_str { @_ = sort { substr($a, 0, 2) cmp substr($b, 0, 2) } @array; } sub standard_str { @_ = sort { $a cmp $b } @array; } sub standard { @_ = sort @array; } timethese ( 100000, {'Numeric with Substring' => '&substr_num', 'String Cmp with Substring' => '&substr_str', 'Standard String Cmp' => '&standard_str', 'Standard' => '&standard'} );