OK - Here's a sample line of what I'm trying to sort: # <b><a href="http://a.website.I.need.to.use/CHARTS/formbrowsec.cgi?AP=CHOPS&FN=F3000022">CHOPS F3000022</a></b> 20000407 Brief problem desc goes here.      SMITH JOHN          ACCEPTED   NGSS70 I need to sort each of these lines by date(20000407 in this example), which if you split the above line by whitespace (split(/\s+/, $line), makes the date the 4th item (3) in the resultant array given by the split function.. I'm running into all sorts of problems with sort b/c of that whole ASCIIbetical thing, and the fact that I can't seem to get the $a and $b to point to the right items to sort by. Can anyone offer any examples of reading from a file, and sorting by a particular field, and then outputting that resultant sorted array? Thanks so much. When I can't understand the examples in the O'Reilly book I start to worry...

In reply to Sorting, arrays and other problems by TrinityInfinity

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