Another ternary approach that gathers  '-' elements to the lowest indices of the output array regardless of the numeric value of any other elements to be sorted, e.g., negative values.

>perl -wMstrict -le
"my @unsorted = (1, 10, '-', 2, -3, 20, '-', '-', 3, 0, 2, 11, 8, 7);
 ;;
 my @sorted = sort numeric_ascending_with_dash_leftmost @unsorted;
 print qq{@sorted};
 ;;
 @sorted = sort { -numeric_ascending_with_dash_leftmost() } @unsorted;
 print qq{reversed: @sorted};
 ;;
 print qq{still unsorted: @unsorted};
 ;;
 sub numeric_ascending_with_dash_leftmost {
   return $a eq '-' ? -1 :
          $b eq '-' ?  1 :
          $a <=> $b
          ;
   }
"
- - - -3 0 1 2 2 3 7 8 10 11 20
reversed: 20 11 10 8 7 3 2 2 1 0 -3 - - -
still unsorted: 1 10 - 2 -3 20 - - 3 0 2 11 8 7
[download]

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