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