You're evaling the code on every execution of the sort block — that's terribly inefficient. Try something like this:

my $sortCriteria = '$hr->{$b}->{"number"} <=> $hr->{$a}->{"number"}';
my $sortfunc = eval "sub { $sortCriteria }';
@sortedKeys = sort $sortfunc keys %$hr;

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That compiles the code just once, puts it in an anonymous function, and stores a reference to that function in $sortfunc. sort then simply calls upon this already-compiled function to compare two values.

Wrapping evaled expressions in a sub { } like that is usually advisable when you're want to run the code passed in the string in a loop.

Makeshifts last the longest.

In reply to Re: Sorting Hash: Sort Criteria Moved Into Eval by Aristotle
in thread Sorting Hash: Sort Criteria Moved Into Eval by mdog

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