I'm not 100% clear on column priorities, so I'm kind of guessing the following, and you can tell us if I'm wrong: 

Priority:   3rd 1st  2nd  4th
          ((1.0 0.1)(99.0 0.2))

[download]

Much of that is nothing but a guess. But let's assume it's accurate so that you can see an example of how you might handle the sorting: 

my @coordinates_unsorted;

while ( <DATA> ) {
    push @coordinates_unsorted, [ m/([\d.]+)/g ];
}

my( @coordinates_sorted ) = 
    sort {
            $a->[1] <=> $b->[1]
        or  $a->[2] <=> $b->[2]
        or  $a->[0] <=> $b->[0]
        or  $a->[3] <=> $b->[3]
    } @coordinates_unsorted;

foreach my $coordinate_ref ( @coordinates_sorted ) {
    printf "((%2.1f %2.1f) (%2.1f %2.1f))\n", @{$coordinate_ref};
}

[download]

An adaptation on that theme ought to work out for you.

And here is essentially the same thing, but using a Schwartzian Transform. ...in this case, readability suffers, IMHO.

my( @coordinates_sorted ) =
    map{ 
        sprintf "((%2.1f %2.1f) (%2.1f %2.1f))\n", @{$_} 
    }
    sort {
            $a->[1] <=> $b->[1]
        or  $a->[2] <=> $b->[2]
        or  $a->[0] <=> $b->[0]
        or  $a->[3] <=> $b->[3]
    }
    map{ 
        [ m/([\d.]+)/g ] 
    }
    <DATA>;

{
    local $, = "\n";
    print @coordinates_sorted;
}

[download]

Dave

In reply to Re: Sorting large sets of geometric coordinates by davido
in thread Sorting large sets of geometric coordinates by Anonymous Monk

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