The problem with some of the other solutions is, this isn't a static hash I'm trying to sort. This is a tied hash to an SDBM database, so just using an array isn't an option as the program has been up and running with data stored for quite some time already.

Your first method seems to be easier to understand/follow, though I've never seen things done like this before...so I'll try going with that. Can you explain what/why $criteria is and why it's 3? And after it's in an array, how would you split everything back into separate variables for printing?

This is an example of my actual coding

tie %db, "DB_File", "$db", O_CREAT | O_RDWR, 0644, $DB_BTREE
  or die "Cannot open file 'db': $!\n";

print "<table>";
foreach (keys %db) {
my ($count, $ip, $time) = split(/\|\|/, $db{$_});
print "<td>$count</td><td>$ip</td><td>$time</td>";
}
</table>
[download]

There are four values (including the key itself), I want to make three of these sortable: the key, $count and $time). My method of doing this is calling a url_param defining the choice of sort. Ie. script.cgi?sort_by=count or script.cgi?sort_by=key and depending on what they chose, a different hash sort method will be used.

Thanks for your time.