Update: I just benchmarked my original suggestion ('Lowest'), and it performs significanly worse than using sort; it's only faster with $num less than 3, and a $hash_size of several thousand :-( 
#!/usr/bin/perl -w

require 5;
use strict;
use Benchmark;
use vars qw( $hash_size %random_hash $num );

$num = 2;
$hash_size = 1000;

# Generate random hash
my $r;
for ($r=1; $r<=$hash_size; $r++) {
    $random_hash{"$r"} = int(rand(1000));
}


sub Lowest(\%) {
    my $hashref = shift;
    my %hash = %{$hashref};
    my $position;
    my $current;
    my @lowest;
    for ($position=0; $position<$num; $position++) {
        my $min;
        my $elem;
        foreach $elem (keys %hash) {
            if (!defined($min) || $hash{$elem} < $min) {
                $min = $hash{$elem};
                $current = $elem;
            }
        }
        $lowest[$position] = $min;
        delete $hash{$current};
        last if !(%hash);
    }
    return @lowest;
}

sub Sort(\%) {
    my $hashref = shift;
    my %hash = %{$hashref};
    my @lowest = (sort {$b <=> $a} values %hash)[0..--$num];
    return @lowest;
}


timethese (
  -20,
    {
        'Method 1' => 'Lowest(%random_hash)',
        'Method 2' => 'Sort(%random_hash)'
    });

exit;

[download]
abowley@lave:~$ ./lowest.pl
Benchmark: running Method 1, Method 2, each for at least 20 CPU second
+s...
  Method 1: 25 wallclock secs (19.80 usr +  0.21 sys = 20.01 CPU) @ 42
+.53/s (n=851)
  Method 2: 25 wallclock secs (20.33 usr +  0.22 sys = 20.55 CPU) @ 43
+.16/s (n=887)

[download]

In reply to Re: extracting values from sort by kilinrax
in thread extracting values from sort by agoth

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