The suggestions you have are the way to go if you're stuck with the %students hash you've described. It would be more generally convenient, I think, to make that a hash of arrays (HoA). This will convert them in place: 

$_ = [split] for values %students;

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After Compline,
Zaxo

In reply to Re: sorting by field of a tab-delimited hash value by Zaxo
in thread sorting by field of a tab-delimited hash value by keiusui

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