The code as it stands doesn't do anything. It seems that the author wanted to sort the %tallies hash, but is it doesn't quite have enough information there to get the job done (and I'm not sure why those my statements are there). It should be something like:

my @sorted_data = sort { $tallies{$a} <=> $tallies{$b} } keys %tallies
+;
[download]

See also sort.

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I wanted to explore how Perl's closures can be manipulated, and ended up creating an object system by accident.
-- Schemer

Note: All code is untested, unless otherwise stated