If you wish to use that syntax, you could use a wrapper. 

sub mysort {
   my $sorter = shift;
   return sort $sorter @_;
}

my @sorted = mysort sorthash_alpha('foo'), @list;

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In reply to Re^3: Is it possible to sort using a coderef, without first storing the coderef in a scalar by ikegami
in thread Is it possible to sort using a coderef, without first storing the coderef in a scalar by imp

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