$ cat 910595.pl #!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Net::IP; my @IPranges = map { new Net::IP($_) } ; @IPranges = sort { # We want largest range first ($b->size() <=> $a->size()) # use IP as next key || ($a->ip() cmp $b->ip()) } @IPranges; print join("\n", @IPranges), "\n"; __DATA__ 1.2.3.0/24 1.2.0.0/16 192.168.0.0/16 192.168.4.0/24 192.168.4.192/26 127.0.0.1/32 10.0.0.0/8 $ ./910595.pl 10/8 1.2/16 192.168/16 1.2.3/24 192.168.4/24 192.168.4.192/26 127.0.0.1/32