I was surprised that this wasn't listed in the HASH FAQ or did I miss it? I have a VERY LARGE HASH (ie 10+ mil entries) and I'd like to print the hash sorted by the value (see sample code bellow). Before you ask: I only need to print the top N of records. I was wondering if anyone has any special incantation that was faster then what I have bellow. 
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -wT
use strict;

my %HASH=( brown=>1, black=>2, red=>5, fub=>3 );

print "   Count |\tKey\n","-" x 60, "\n";
foreach my $key ( sort { $HASH{$b} <=> $HASH{$a} } ( keys(%HASH))) {
      printf ("%8s |\t%s\n", $HASH{$key}, $key);
} # end of foreach

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Ideas/comments?

In reply to *Fastest* way to print a hash sorted by value by smellysocks

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