It depends on whether your sample data represents an array-of-arrays, with each non-whitespace token as an element of a sub-array, or a single-level array with each line as an element. In the first case, it's fairly simple, something like this: 

sub sort_aoa {
  my( $array, $column ) = @_;
  return sort { $a->[$column] cmp $b->[$column] } @$array;
}

[download]

If each element is a whole line, you'll have to split them into words before sorting. This is where a Schwartzian Transform is likely to help the most, but I'll show the basic idea and you can add that:

sub sort_lines_by_column {
  my( $array, $column ) = @_;
  return sort {
    return( (split ' ', $a)[$column] cmp (split ' ', $b)[$column] );
  } @$array;
}

[download]

(Untested. In both cases, replace the 'cmp' comparison with whatever you want.)

Aaron B.
Available for small or large Perl jobs and *nix system administration; see my home node.

In reply to Re^4: Sorting based on any column by aaron_baugher
in thread Sorting based on any column by Anonymous Monk

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