in reply to Complex hash sorting

Anonymous Monk,
Being able to sort the hash as you have it could be done with the Schwartzian Transform. The trouble is that you may want to change your mind at any point - or perhaps you want to add new keys and values without concerning yourself with the sort order. Take a look at the following:
#!/usr/bin/perl use strict; use warnings; use Tie::Hash::Sorted; my %hash = ( 'william A nye' => '39||Somehere in Cali||Cali||12345', 'homer simpson' => '36||Springfield||unknown||23456', 'barney rubble' => '31||Bedrock||cartoon location||3456', ); my %sort_by = ( val1 => sub { my $hash = shift; return [ map { $_->[0] } sort { $a->[1] cmp $b->[1] } map { [$_ , split /\|\|/ , $hash->{$_} ] } keys %$hash ]; }, val2 => sub { my $hash = shift; return [ map { $_->[0] } sort { $a->[2] cmp $b->[2] } map { [$_ , split /\|\|/ , $hash->{$_} ] } keys %$hash ]; }, ); tie my %sorted_hash, 'Tie::Hash::Sorted', 'Hash' => \%hash, 'Sort_Rout +ine' => $sort_by{val1}; print "Sorting on the first sub value\n"; print "$_ : $sorted_hash{$_}\n" for keys %sorted_hash; # Later on you want to sort by the second field tied( %sorted_hash )->Sort_Routine( $sort_by{val2} ); print "\nSorting on the second sub value\n"; print "$_ : $sorted_hash{$_}\n" for keys %sorted_hash;
Cheers - L~R