Are you doing the sort on numeric data or strings? If so, you need to use '==' instead of 'eq', '!=' instead of 'ne', and '<' insetad of 'lt'. Or was that just part of the psedocode style?

Also, your comments seem to indicate you're showing how to do a sort in Perl for academic reasons. If not, you should just use sort instead.

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Invent a rounder wheel.