1. sort array based on number of elements in each from smallest to largest

Here's something sort of like what I imagine you might want given the preceding array pseudo-code: 

c:\@Work\Perl>perl -wMstrict -le
"use Data::Dump;
 ;;
 my @ra_1 = qw(a b c d);
 my @ra_2 = (1 .. 9);
 my @ra_3 = qw(p z e t i u);
 my @ra_4 = qw(foo bar baz);
 ;;
 my @AoA = (\@ra_1, \@ra_2, \@ra_3, \@ra_4);
 dd \@AoA;
 ;;
 my @sorted = sort { @$a <=> @$b } @AoA;
 dd \@sorted;
"
[
  ["a" .. "d"],
  [1 .. 9],
  ["p", "z", "e", "t", "i", "u"],
  ["foo", "bar", "baz"],
]

[
  ["foo", "bar", "baz"],
  ["a" .. "d"],
  ["p", "z", "e", "t", "i", "u"],
  [1 .. 9],
]

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The statement
    my @AoA = (\@ra_1, \@ra_2, \@ra_3, \@ra_4);
can also be written
    my @AoA = \(@ra_1, @ra_2, @ra_3, @ra_4);
for the same effect; the second form is just a short-hand version of the first.

2. is it possible to sort the sub-arrays by name? then size?

I don't understand what this means. Do you want to sort by the names of the lexical variables? If so, why? Maybe you really want a more complex structure than an array or array-of-arrays, e.g, a data structure. Please see perldsc.

3. to do a random sort by name with (1A,2A…) then (1B,2B,…). ...

Any array can be randomly 'sorted'. See List::Util::shuffle.

I don't really understand the rest of the code you present in the OP.

Update: Many incremental changes. Sorry.

In reply to Re: multiple array processing by AnomalousMonk
in thread multiple array processing by f77coder

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