Hey all;

I need to find the top $x number of scores out of a hash table, where the scores can be large or small (1 to millions). The hash table is in the format of $Stats{$PortNumber} = $score.

Initially I thought that I could simply pull the top $x (10) scores by obtaining their keys ($PortNumber) for use later in the program. So, I used the following code: 

$NumOfPortsToGet = 10;
$c = 0;
foreach $value (sort {$Stats{$a} cmp $Stats{$b}} keys %Stats) {
    if ($c < $NumOfPortsToGet && $value ne "UnauthOrigin") {
        $Ports[$c] = $value;
        $c++;
    }
}

[download]
However, after trying this, it would always come back with entries that had a score of 99. After printing out the entire list of scores, it became immediately apparent what the problem was. I have other scores like 98347, but those are ranked down with the 98 scores. This happens throughout the rankings.

I thought about zero-padding the numbers, but I do not know how large the numbers may actual get in the wild (they could get extremely large); making it difficult to efficiently zero-pad the numbers (if that would even work).

Does anyone have any idea how I could get the REAL value sort out of this? I haven't been able to find anything as yet through searches.

Thanks for everyones help and take care.

UPDATE: FIXED - STUPID MISTAKE (cmp change to <=>) thanks JediWizard

In reply to Sorting Hash By Large Number Values by NathanE

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