I create an HoA as a holder for the data. Change the index in the sort line in the for loop. 

#! /usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;

my %data;
while (my $line = <DATA>)
{
  chomp $line;
  my @array = split '\|', $line;
  my $key = shift @array;
  $data{$key} = \@array;
}

#for (sort keys %data)
for (sort {$data{$a}[0] cmp $data{$b}[0]} keys %data)
{
  print $_, '=', join (', ', @{$data{$_}}), "\n";
}

__DATA__
1|name9|blah|blah|blah
2|name8|blah|blah|blah
3|name7|blah|blah|blah
4|name6|blah|blah|blah
5|name5|blah|blah|blah
6|name4|blah|blah|blah
7|name3|blah|blah|blah
8|name2|blah|blah|blah
9|name1|blah|blah|blah

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In reply to Re: How to sort an array by pbeckingham
in thread How to sort an array by cosmicsoup

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