It's your return() statement. You've got return (X) or (Y) which Perl reads as (return(X)) or (Y), and since return() ALWAYS returns, you never get to the second clause. Rewrite it as return ((X) or (Y)) or, in your specific case, return X or Y.

And if you find any typos or errors otherwise in the article, please let me know. A problem I noticed looking at it right now is that the orcish maneuver should really be: 

my $data_a = exists($cache{$a}) ? $cache{$a} : ($cache{$a} = mangle($a
+));
my $data_b = exists($cache{$b}) ? $cache{$b} : ($cache{$b} = mangle($b
+));

[download]
to allow for false and undefined values to be returned by mangle().
Jeff japhy Pinyan, P.L., P.M., P.O.D, X.S.: Perl, regex, and perl hacker
How can we ever be the sold short or the cheated, we who for every service have long ago been overpaid? ~~ Meister Eckhart

In reply to Re: Sorting problem with Orcish Manuever by japhy
in thread Sorting problem with Orcish Manuever by roboticus

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.