if you can get the data into an array of arrays, the following would work very nicely. There is probably a nicer way to do the loop, than a foreach though.

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
 
my @array = (
     ['foo', 1, 'zot'],
     ['foo', 2, 'blahblah'],
     ['bar', 1, 'zot'],
     ['bar', 2, 'zot'],
     ['bat', 1, 'blahblah'],
     ['bat', 2, ''],
     ['baz', 1, ''],
     ['baz', 2, 'zot'],
);
 
 
my @sorted;
foreach my $array (@array){
  ($array->[2] eq 'blahblah' ? unshift @sorted, $array : push @sorted,
+ $array);
}
[download]

--eric