I think i would bit-encode the numbers into a single numeric value, ordering them from most to least significant.

Eg. You have values A > B > C in terms of importance, and each could range from 0 .. 3, the the combination of A=2, B=3, C=1 would become b'101101'. Converted back to a single numeric value they can be sorted numerically and the position of the fields will weight the sort.

You'll probably have to change the pack/unpack formats (switch the first 'b' for 'B'?), and possible drop one or both of the reverses on non-intel platforms.

This assumes 6 values in the range 0 .. 3.

#! perl -slw
use strict;

my @data = map{
    [ map{ int rand 4 } 1 .. 6 ]
} 1 .. 20;

my @sorted = map {
    $_->[1]
} sort {
    $b->[0] <=> $a->[0]
} map {
    my $n = unpack 'N', pack 'B32', reverse join '', map{
        scalar reverse unpack 'b2', pack 'C*',$_
    } @$_ ;
    [ $n, $_ ]
} @data;

print "@$_" for @sorted;

__END__
P:\test>503446.pl
3 3 2 3 3 3
3 3 2 3 1 0
3 2 1 2 2 1
3 1 3 3 1 0
3 0 3 1 2 2
3 0 0 2 1 3
2 2 1 1 2 1
2 1 3 3 3 0
2 0 0 3 0 3
2 0 0 2 1 0
1 3 3 3 2 1
1 3 1 0 1 2
1 2 1 0 1 1
1 0 3 1 2 2
1 0 0 1 2 1
0 1 3 1 2 3
0 1 1 3 3 0
0 1 0 3 3 1
0 0 0 3 3 2
0 0 0 3 1 3
[download]