This is partially true. There are two? three? more? meta tags that are required to go first including some display related stuff and the always #1, since it affects everything that follows, <meta charset="UTF-8">.

Elements are ordered. Attributes are not.

($q=q:Sq=~/;[c](.)(.)/;chr(-||-|5+lengthSq)`"S|oS2"`map{chr |+ord
}map{substrSq`S_+|`|}3E|-|`7**2-3:)=~y+S|`+$1,++print+eval$q,q,a,
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https://www.w3.org/TR/html5/document-metadata.html#character-encoding-declaration makes no mention of order being significant for <meta> tags either

If you aren't opposed to dirty little hacks, you could modify the attribute names you make to take advantage of the "sort keys" used in the starttag sub to order the attributes.

e.g. instead of

$m_el->attr('name',$m);
$m_el->attr('content',$meta{$m});
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$m_el->attr('aa01_name',$m);
$m_el->attr('aa02_content',$meta{$m});
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I only feel a little dirty ;)

Maybe a better convention would be to use leading whitespace to enforce the ordering:

$m_el->attr(' name',$m);
$m_el->attr('  content',$meta{$m});
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This way, the output would create the attribute "names" with their leading whitespace, but in the correct order. And hopefully, the receiving side won't care about the additional whitespace.

my %meta = (
"Author"=>"J K Rolling",
"title","Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"
);
Sorts: Author, title

<meta content="J K Rolling" name="Author" />
<meta content="Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" name="title" 
+/>


my %meta = (
"author"=>"J K Rolling",
"Title","Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"
);
Sorts: Title, author

<meta content="Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" name="Title" 
+/>
<meta content="J K Rolling" name="author" />
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my @meta = (
["Author"=>"J K Rolling"],
["title","Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"]
);
Sorts: Author, title

<meta content="J K Rolling" name="Author" />
<meta content="Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" name="title" 
+/>


my @meta = (
["author"=>"J K Rolling"],
["Title","Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"]
);
Sorts: author, Title

<meta content="J K Rolling" name="author" />
<meta content="Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" name="Title" 
+/>
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I used this loop for the AoA:

for my $m ( @meta ) {
  my $m_el = HTML::Element->new('meta');
     $m_el->attr('name',$m->[0]);
     $m_el->attr('content',$m->[1]);
     $head->push_content($m_el);
}
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Thanx for your input so far

I think I should clarify the the problem it's not browser, they don't care what order the meta data is or charset

The output is read by an automated process this is failing because it requires the meta tags to be name content eg

<meta name="Author" content="J K Rolling" />
<meta  name="title" content="Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone"
+ />
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The output is read by an automated process this is failing because it requires the meta tags to be name content

In that case you have a problem because this "automated process" is not accepting valid HTML and pretty much any of the pre-written modules you might use (HTML::Element included) will not care about attribute ordering as has been discussed by my fellow monks already.

The real fix here is to change the "automated process" to avoid the insistence on attribute ordering. Failling that, I guess you will need to abandon HTML::Element and fall back on hand-rolling the HTML. Good luck.

I have no control over the automated process The only solution I have come up with is to do this but not very elegant I was hopping someone would have a better idea

for my $m (sort keys %meta)
{
  my $m_el = HTML::Element->new('meta');
     $m_el->attr('0name',$m);
     $m_el->attr('1content',$meta{$m});
     $head->push_content($m_el);
}

my $out = $body->as_HTML('<>&','      ',{});
$out=~s/0name/name/g;
$out=~s/1content/content/g;
print $out;
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...hand-rolling the HTML

Hahaha.

Yeah. Maybe he can hire some of the neighborhood kids to help him. They probably are looking for something to do this summer.

(Thank you for adding some humour to my day.)

6,000 lines. I am new here. Can't you use pastebin?

6,000 lines. I am new here. Can't you use pastebin?

How would that help? No one reads 6000 lines. And it's off-site, probably getting lost over time. Not to mention confidentiality.

Generally, it is much more helpful to post a short, self-contained example right here.

Alexander

--
Today I will gladly share my knowledge and experience, for there are no sweeter words than "I told you so". ;-)

for my $m (sort nameFirst ('fred', 'alf', 'tom', 'bert', 'name', 'pete
+')) {
    print "$m\n";
}
sub nameFirst {
    if ($a eq 'name') {
        -1;
    }
    elsif ($b eq 'name') {
        1;
    }
    else {
        0;
    }
}
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name
fred
alf
tom
bert
pete
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sub nameBlahAref {
    naeval($a) <=> naeval($b);
}
sub naeval {
    $_[0] eq 'name' and return 1;
    $_[0] eq 'aref' and return 3;
    return 2;
}
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#!/usr/bin/perl

#  html_indenting2.pl      perl html_indenting2.pl  HTML indenting wit
+h Perl.
# From http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8225194/html-indenting-with-
+perl best answer

use strict;
use warnings;

use HTML::HTML5::Parser qw();
use HTML::HTML5::Writer qw();
use XML::LibXML::PrettyPrint qw();

print HTML::HTML5::Writer->new(
    start_tags => 'force',
    end_tags => 'force',
)->document(
    XML::LibXML::PrettyPrint->new_for_html(
        indent_string => "\t"
    )->pretty_print(
        HTML::HTML5::Parser->new->parse_string(
            q[<meta content="J K Rolling" name="Author" />
<meta content="Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone" name="title" 
+/>
]
        )
    )
);
  
# This prints:
# <!DOCTYPE html><html>
#         <head>
#                 <meta content="J K Rolling" name=Author>
#                 <meta content="Harry Potter and the Philosopher's St
+one" name=title>
#         </head>
#         <body></body>
# </html>

__END__
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The order of the meta content is the way you want it.

No it isn't, its same problem as in the OP, not the order that "it should be"

Oh, dear. I'm sorry.

I promise I will double-check and triple-check my results from now on.