You want a custom sort function. Assuming you have a list of lists in @record, the following would do the job: my @sorted = sort { $a->[2] cmp $b->[2] || $b->[1] <=> $a->[1] } @record; It uses cmp on to compare the third elements of each record, and if they turn out to be identical, uses <=> to compare the second elements of each record in reverse order.

Makeshifts last the longest.