Greetings all,
A little late I see but here is what I would do...
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my @things_to_sort = (
                   { author => 'bart', title => 'skateboarding' },
                   { author => 'lisa', title => 'postmodernism' },
                   { author => 'marge', title => 'hairstyles' },
                   { author => 'lisa', title => 'THIS BOOK FIRST' },
                   { author => 'homer', title => 'donuts' },
                   { author => 'bart', title => 'coolness' }
                  );
#this begs for a new structure.
#lets use a hash.
my %authors_books;

#turn your AoH's into a HoA's
#see perldsc for reference
foreach (@things_to_sort){
    push @{$authors_books{$_->{author}}}, $_->{title};
}

#sort the books for each author
foreach my $author (keys %authors_books){
    @{$authors_books{$author}} = sort{
            $a  eq  "THIS BOOK FIRST" && -1
             or  $b  eq  "THIS BOOK FIRST" &&  1 
             or  $a cmp $b
    }@{$authors_books{$author}};
}

#figure out who to display first.
my @display_keys = sort{
        (grep /THIS BOOK FIRST/, @{$authors_books{$a}}) && -1
        or (grep /THIS BOOK FIRST/, @{$authors_books{$b}}) && 1
        or $a cmp $b
    } keys %authors_books;

#display the information.
foreach my $display_key (@display_keys){
    print "$display_key books:\n";
    foreach (@{$authors_books{$display_key}}){
        print "\t$_\n";
    }
}
exit;

[download]
The Output
lisa books:
    THIS BOOK FIRST
    postmodernism
bart books:
    coolness
    skateboarding
homer books:
    donuts
marge books:
    hairstyles

[download]


-InjunJoel

P.S.
thanks davido for the sort idea.

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use." -Galileo

In reply to Re: Twisted sort requirements by injunjoel
in thread Twisted sort requirements by forrest

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