As noted by thpfft noted, it's not an array ref. If you can't change the part of the program that does the pushing and are doing strictly string compares, I would do the following for efficiency. (But personally I would just push an arrary ref instead of a string or at least explode them into array refs, do all processing and then join them back.)

my @sorted = 
      map { $_->[1] } # Lose the keys and return just original string
      sort { $a->[1] cmp $b->[1] } # Compare the keys
          # Make a temp array with [0] = original string, [1] a combin
+ation of desired fields (key).
      map { [$_, (sprintf("%-5s%-8s%-8s" , split (/\s*,\s*/) )) ]  } 
      @{$outputRef};
[download]

The sprintf just joins the fields into one big padded string. You would want to change the %-5s to whatever number of chars is appropriate for the data.

-Lee

"To be civilized is to deny one's nature."