Hi markdavis87,

this is not really sorting but really counting the number of distinct entries and then sorting the counts. The easiest way is to store your lines an a hash, with the full line being the key and the count the value. Assuming your lines are stored in the @data array, you could do this: 

my %count_hash;
for my $line (@data) {
     $count_hash{$line} ++;
}

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Then you only need to sort on line size and count. And you're done.

Edit 17:39: To do the sort, something like this should probably work (untested): 

my @sorted_data = sort { length $a <=> length $b || $count_hash{b} <=>
+ $count_hash{$a} } keys %count_hash;

[download]
This is supposed to sort the hash content in ascending order of line lengths and descending order of counts.

Edit 2, 18:30: small typo on the sorting above statement. It should be: 

my @sorted_data = sort { length $a <=> length $b || $count_hash{$b} <=
+> $count_hash{$a} } keys %count_hash;

[download]
(I had $count_hash{b} instead of $count_hash{$b}.)

In reply to Re: String sorting in Perl by Laurent_R
in thread String sorting in Perl by markdavis87

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