Based on the suggestions offered here and some discussions with other programmers, this is the working code I came up with, for anyone who is interested. Thanks for all the great suggestions!

sub merge {
    my @allparts = @_;

    # make an array of just the end points
    my @ends = map{ [$_->[0], $_->[-1]] } @allparts;

    # give us a starting point
    my @sorted = (shift(@ends));

    # while we still have unsorted ends
    OUTER: while(@ends) {
        # check each of the unsorted ends to see if they can
        # attach, we only compare them to the last element of
        # @sorted because if we have more than one element in
        # @sorted, then we already checked all of @ends against
        # the elements at the beginning
        for my $x (0 .. $#ends) {
            # see if we can attach it at the beginning
            if($sorted[-1]->[0] == $ends[$x]->[1]) {
                unshift(@{$sorted[-1]},@{splice(@ends,$x,1)});
                next OUTER;
            }   
            # see if we can attach it at the end
            if($ends[$x]->[0] == $sorted[-1]->[-1]) {
                push(@{$sorted[-1]},@{splice(@ends,$x,1)});
                next OUTER;
            }   
        }
        # if we get here, then we didn't find
        # any @ends that attach to anything
        # in @sorted, so we grab one of the
        # @ends to make a new section, and
        # continue
        push(@sorted,shift(@ends));
    }

    # now go through the sections in @sorted, and replace
    # them with the appropriate complete data from @allparts.
    for my $x (0 .. $#sorted) {
        my @ends = @{$sorted[$x]};
        my @full = ();
        # for each start/end combination
        while(my($start,$end) = splice(@ends,0,2)) {
            # find the chunk it came from
            #print "start=$start end=$end\n";
            foreach(@allparts) {
                #print "0=$_->[0]\n";
                #print Dumper($_);
                if(($_->[0] == $start) && ($_->[-1] == $end)) {
                    pop(@full); # get rid of the duplicate piece
                    push(@full,@{$_});
                    last;
                }
            }
        }
        $sorted[$x] = [@full];
    }

    return @sorted;
}
[download]

---

---

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! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

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:
	&		&
	<		&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.