Maybe something like this is what you wanted? It is rather on the dark side of the force but it may be what you want. 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my @l = (2, 4, 19, 3, 15, 30, 1, 31, 14);

print sort {&{bysort("up")}} @l;
print $/;
print sort {&{bysort("dn")}} @l;
print $/;

sub bysort {
  my $by = shift;
  if ($by eq "up") {
    return sub { $a <=> $b };
  } elsif ($by eq "dn") {
    return sub { $b <=> $a };
  } else {
    return sub { $a cmp $b };
  }
}

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$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)

In reply to Re: Scoping issue when sorting with subroutines by extremely
in thread Scoping issue when sorting with subroutines by Dave05

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