in reply to Is this sort of possible

What you can use is the Schwartzian Transform (thx merlyn). Here is my attempt at your problem. 

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my @FILE = ('123|title|1/1/01','123|btitle|1/1/01','123|atitle|1/1/01'
+);

print @FILE,"\n";

my @output =
    map { $_->[0] }
sort { $a->[1] cmp $b->[1] }
map { [$_, (split(/\|/,$_))[1]] }
@FILE;

print @output,"\n";

[download]

grep 
grep> cd pub
grep> more beer

[download]

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Re: Is this sort of possible
by derby (Abbot) on Dec 31, 2001 at 19:23 UTC
    Or why even bother reading the file contents into an array? 

    #!/usr/bin/perl -wd

open( FILE, "file.dat" ) ||
        die "Cannot Open file ($!)\n";
my @output =  map { $_->[0] }
              sort { $a->[1] cmp $b->[1] }
              map { [$_, (split(/\|/,$_))[1]] }
              <FILE>;

close( FILE );

print @output, "\n";

    [download]

    -derby

[reply]
[d/l]

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom