Thanks to everyone who helped me with my previous post on sorting. In response, I would like to add some more information and clarify some of the variables that are being used.

As stated in my last post, I want to sort some numbers in descending order, but can only get this code to sort them ascending. I apologize for the vagueness, but this is not my code...I'm just picking up on a job that another programmer left.
Thanks in advance for any help that can be provided. 


   $sortby="number";
   $sort=2;

[download]

foreach $line (sort(sort_func &read_file("DATAFILE")))
    
    close(DATAFILE);



sub sort_func
{
    #local($a, $b) = @_;
    my(@a_items) = split("\t", $a,$datafields);
    my(@b_items) = split("\t", $b, $datafields);
    my($item_no) = $sort;            # the number of the field to 
                        # sort on.
    my($result) = 0;            # default is equal
    
    if ($sortby eq "string"){
        $result = $a_items[$item_no] cmp $b_items[$item_no]; }
        
     elsif ($sortby eq "number"){
        $result = $b_items[$item_no] <=> $a_items[$item_no];} # for nu
+mbers
        return($result);
}


sub read_file {

  my ($filevar) = @_;

  <$filevar>;  
}

[download]

In reply to Sorting Numbers by Devo

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.