McMahon,
I am too tired to think of a Fast, Flexible, Stable Sort solution, so here is a Schwartzian Transform. You will have to modify this depending on your real data. 
#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my @array = (
    'Item1 - 2 foo, 2 bar',
    'Item2 - 0 foo, 1 bar',
    'Item3 - 1 foo, 3 bar',
    'Item4 - 1 foo, 2 bar',
);
my @sorted =
    map { $_->[0] }
    # $b <=> $a for descending is better than reverse sort
    sort { $b->[2] <=> $a->[2] || $b->[1] <=> $a->[1] }
    map { [$_, / (\d+) [^\d]+(\d+)/] } @array;
print "$_\n" for @sorted;

[download]
Cheers - L~R

In reply to Re: Sort array according to a value in each element? by Limbic~Region
in thread Sort array according to a value in each element? by McMahon

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