Hello

Your columns are kind of consistent:

my @unordered = (
  '12 Corinthians 5:10',
  'Hebrews 11:15',
  '1 Corinthians 13:23',
  '2 Corinthians 1:3',
  'John 3:16',
  '1 Corinthians 12:10',
  '1 Corinthians 2:10',
  '1 Corinthians 2:10'
);
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Basically, all your lines match

/^(\d+ )?(\D+) (\d+):(\d+)$/.
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Here is how it can be done assuming you want to sort by the first number, then by the word, then by the number before the ':', then finally by the number after the ':'.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

my @unordered = (
  '12 Corinthians 5:10',
  'Hebrews 11:15',
  '1 Corinthians 13:23',
  '2 Corinthians 1:3',
  'John 3:16',
  '1 Corinthians 12:10',
  '1 Corinthians 2:10',
  '1 Corinthians 2:10'
);

my @sorted = map  { $_->[0] }
             sort { ($a->[1]||0) <=> ($b->[1]||0) ||
                    $a->[2] cmp $b->[2] ||
                    $a->[3] <=> $b->[3] ||
                    $a->[4] <=> $b->[4] }
             map  { [$_, /^(\d+ )?([A-Za-z]+) (\d+):(\d+)$/] }
             @unordered;

print "$_\n" for @sorted;

# Hebrews 11:15
# John 3:16
# 1 Corinthians 2:10
# 1 Corinthians 2:10
# 1 Corinthians 12:10
# 1 Corinthians 13:23
# 2 Corinthians 1:3
# 12 Corinthians 5:10
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Hope this helps,,,

Aziz,,,