use strict; use Data::Dumper; # for investigating data structures my %data; # load data into hash of arrays while () { chomp; my @fields = split/,/; $data{$fields[0]} = \@fields; # first column = hash key } print "\%data - \n", Dumper(\%data); # We will transform the hash into a sorted array # sorted on the 3rd column (score) my @array = sort { $a->[2] <=> $b->[2] } map { $data{$_} } keys %data; print "\@array - \n", Dumper(\@array); # Output sorted data lines print "Sorted data - \n"; foreach (@array) { printf "%s\n", join ',', @{$_}; } __DATA__ Sequence1,0001,80 Sequence2,0002,20 Sequence3,0003,40 Sequence4,0004,100 Sequence5,0005,70 #### %data - $VAR1 = { 'Sequence1' => [ 'Sequence1', '0001', '80' ], 'Sequence2' => [ 'Sequence2', '0002', '20' ], 'Sequence3' => [ 'Sequence3', '0003', '40' ], 'Sequence4' => [ 'Sequence4', '0004', '100' ], 'Sequence5' => [ 'Sequence5', '0005', '70' ] }; @array - $VAR1 = [ [ 'Sequence2', '0002', '20' ], [ 'Sequence3', '0003', '40' ], [ 'Sequence5', '0005', '70' ], [ 'Sequence1', '0001', '80' ], [ 'Sequence4', '0004', '100' ] ]; Sorted data - Sequence2,0002,20 Sequence3,0003,40 Sequence5,0005,70 Sequence1,0001,80 Sequence4,0004,100 #### my %data; $data{key} = value; #### %data->{key} = value; #### @sorted_array = map {$_->[0] } sort { $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] } map { [ $_, (split/,/)[2] ] } # retrieve the third key @original_array;