If any of the doesn't make sense, see sort, perlop, perldata, perlsyn. 
use strict;

my @list_o_num = qw( 1 22 44 55 63 2 1 2 4 54 8 7 9 2 9 );
my @sorted_list_o_num = sort { $b <=> $a } @list_o_num;
my( $num_1, $num_2, $num_3 ) = @sorted_list_o_num;

[download]
This however, does not account for duplicates (9 9 7), so this approach might be better 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my @list_o_num = qw( 9 9 9 10 9 8 7 9 6 );
my %list_o_num = map {
  if ( exists $list_o_num{$_} ) {
    $list_o_num{$_}++;
  }
  else {
    $_ => 1;
  }
}
@list_o_num;
my @true_top_3 = sort { $b <=> $a } keys %list_o_num;

[download]
None of this is tested, but it should work (short of any typos).

Note: See blakem's comment and example here for a fix to make this solution actually work.

In reply to Re: How to find the N largest values in an array? by Anonymous Monk
in thread How to find the N largest values in an array? by dubx56

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