in reply to sorting a listview

Well I set-up a quick test .... basically one of your sort mechanisms seems to not be working.

I commented out the offending code and the code appears to work now. I also made some minor changes to accomodate my wrapper for variables and control names.

Since Strings and numbers are scalars you don't need to differentiate them( i think ) they can be directly compared and will sort out. I tested with random numbers, random characters and combinations it worked for all colummns so I added a column and it still worked.

I didn't examine the faulty code to trace the reason it didn't work but if you want root cause you have a starting point.

I used Gui::Loft so below is just your code with the added comments as otherwise I'd have to send you the binary gld file as well as the script. 
#--------------------- Anonymonk's Code ------------------------------

sub lvwListView1_ColumnClick {  #modified to match my Listview's name
    
    #######ADDED to define variables...
    defined(my $win = $Win32::GUI::Loft::window{winWindow1}) 
        or return(1);
    $ListView = $win->lvwListView1;
    #################################################################
    
    $totalcols = 7; #5 and 6 are hidden

    my $column = shift;
    $column=$column+1;

    if ($lastcolumn == $column) {
    
    $sortorder = 1 - $sortorder;

    } else {
    
    $sortorder = 0;

    }

    
    %data=();
    ###Corrected ? wherewas this initialized in original code?
    $rows= $ListView->Count();
    ####
    

    for $i(0..$rows-1) {
    
        $row="";
    my %result=$ListView->GetItem($i,0);
    $image=$result{-image};
    
    for $j(0..$totalcols-1) {
    
        my %result=$ListView->GetItem($i,$j);
        $text=$result{-text};
        $row.=",$text";
    
    }
    
    $data{$i}="$image$row";

  }

    my %sortcol = NewList($column, %data);

    SortListItem(\%data,\%sortcol,$column);

    if ($sortorder) {

    print "Sorted descending by Column $column\n";

    } else {

    print "Sorted ascending by Column $column\n";

    }

    return;
}

sub SortListItem {

   my ($data,$sortcol,$column) = @_;
   my $check;
   my %data = %$data;
   my %sortcol = %$sortcol;

   $check = "$_" foreach (values %sortcol);

   $ListView->Clear();  ## clear the ListView window
   $index = 0;

   if ($sortorder == 0) {  ## this is sorting in ascending order
   
###Problem in Columns 1&4 ?  So comment them out No need to differenti
+ate between #'s and letters in perl.   
=head
       if (($column == 1) or ($column == 4)) {

       foreach (sort{(substr($sortcol{$a},0,index($sortcol{$a}," "))) 
+<=> (substr($sortcol{$b},0,index($sortcol{$b}," "))) } keys %sortcol)
+ {

           my @newdata = split/,/,$data{$_};
           InsertListItem(@newdata);

       }

       } else {
###Problem in Columns 1&4 ?  So comment them out No need to differenti
+ate between #'s and letters in perl.           
=cut

       foreach (sort { uc($sortcol{$a}) cmp uc($sortcol{$b})} keys %so
+rtcol) {

           my @newdata = split/,/,$data{$_};
           InsertListItem(@newdata);

       }

       #}

   } else {   ## this is sorting in descending order
=head
       if (($column == 1) or ($column == 4)) {

       foreach (sort {(substr($sortcol{$b},0,index($sortcol{$b}," ")))
+ <=> (substr($sortcol{$a},0,index($sortcol{$a}," "))) } keys %sortcol
+) {

           my @newdata = split/,/,$data{$_};
           InsertListItem(@newdata);

       }

       } else {
=cut
       foreach (sort { uc($sortcol{$b}) cmp uc($sortcol{$a})} keys %so
+rtcol) {

           my @newdata = split/,/,$data{$_};
           InsertListItem(@newdata);

#       }

       }

   }

   return;
}



sub NewList  {

    my ($column,%sortcol) = @_;
    my $sortthis;

    foreach (keys %sortcol) {

    my @info = split /,/, $sortcol{$_};
    $sortthis = $info[$column];
    $sortcol{$_} = "$sortthis";

    }

    return(%sortcol);

}



sub InsertListItem {
    #######ADDED to define variables...
    defined(my $win = $Win32::GUI::Loft::window{winWindow1}) 
        or return(1);
    $ListView = $win->lvwListView1;
    #################################################################
    my(@info) = @_;

    $ListView->InsertItem(
                  -text  => [@info[1],@info[2],@info[3],@info[4],@info
+[5],@info[6],@info[7]]
                  );

}

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