There is a problem with your implementation of the GRT. Your map blocks are returning the return code (0|1) from the substitutions, rather than the modified values. As is, all you will get is an array of 1's in the resultant array.

Besides that, as you know that the first character is 'A', there is little point in using the GRT to move that constant character to the end, do an alpha sort and then move it back to the front. A straight alpha sort on the original strings will produce the same results and you avoid the need for the two transformations.

However, if the string following the first char is numeric (as implied by the OP, and your ST example), then moving the 'A' to the end prior to doing an alpha sort will not result in the correct ordering.

print  map{ 
    s/\A (.*)(.) \z/$2$1/x; 
    $_ 
} sort map{ 
    s/\A (.)(.*) \z/$2$1/x; 
    $_ 
} (@temp = qw[ A1 A11 A111 A2 A5 A50 ]);

A111 A11 A1 A2 A50 A5
[download]

In order for the GRT to work, you need to ensure that the prefix applied to the strings will sort correctly when an alpha sort is applied to them. If the arbitrating values are numeric, then you need to prefix the string such that those numeric values are represented in such a way that they will sort numerically, even though an alpha sort is being used. That's where pack came into the original name.

perl> print map{ 
    substr $_, 2 
} sort map{ 
    pack( 'n', $_ =~ m[(\d+)] ) . $_  
} (@temp = qw[ A1 A11 A111 A2 A5 A50 ]);

A1 A2 A5 A11 A50 A111
[download]

Note: The choice of pack format implies that I know that the numeric values in the strings will fit in a 2-byte integer. If they won't, then moving to a 4-byte integer is called for. It is also important to realise that using 'v' instead of 'n' as the pack format would not have worked.