Hashes are intrinsically unsorted so the way to iterate through a hash in a sorted order is either to sort the keys or the values like so

my %hash = (
    foo  => 'some text',
    bar  => 'more text',
    baz  => 'less text',
    quux => 'dead text'
);

print "%hash sorted by keys\n\n";
foreach my $k (sort keys %hash) {
    print "$k: $hash{$k}\n";
}

print "\n%hash sorted by values\n\n";
foreach my $v (sort values %hash) {
    print "$v\n";
}

__output__

%hash sorted by keys

bar: more text
baz: less text
foo: some text
quux: dead text

%hash sorted by values

dead text
less text
more text
some text
[download]

For more info about hashes in perl check out the perldata man page, for the functions used in the above code see sort(), keys() & values() and if you're dealing with nested hashes see perlref.
HTH

_________
broquaint