I'm not exactly sure what you want, but I'm assuming you're looking to sort first by word, then by each of the three numbers. Something like the following might work: 
use strict;
use warnings;

my @arr;

while (<DATA>) {
    chomp;
    m/(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)(\w*)/;
    $arr[$#arr+1] = [$4,$1,$2,$3,$_];
}
@arr = sort {@$a[0] cmp @$b[0] or @$a[1] <=> @$b[1] or @$a[2] <=> @$b[
+2] or @$a[3] <=> @$b[3]} @arr;
for (@arr) { print @$_[4]."\n"; }

__DATA__
1.2.3YABBA
4.2.7
3.2.1DABBA
9.1.3
4.5.1DOO
12.19.47

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In reply to Re: Sorting non-standard elements by TedPride
in thread Sorting non-standard elements by tradez

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