Maybe - but I don't think so. First, I don't have a chained subroutine. I am calling sort with a user defined sort routine and a list only. There is no additional routine to modify the list before passing it to sort that could get confused as the comparator. Also, your post indicated that by b0rk it didn't produce any results. In my case, I am getting a pop up saying that perl encountered a problem and needed to close requesting a report be sent to M$.