I did something like this once using just arrays. I dont know if this better or worse than hashes. I used multidimensional arrays so you end up refering to the data by $data[row][coloum]. I also made it a sub that returns the array this makes it easier to use in other scripts. 
#!/usr/local/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my @sorted=sort_file('data.txt');
my $cnt=0;
my $size=@sorted;
while ($cnt < $size) {
  print "$sorted[$cnt][0] is of type $sorted[$cnt][1] - $sorted[$cnt][
+2]\n";
  $cnt++;
  }
exit();

sub sort_file{
    my $filename = shift;
    open DATA,$filename|| die "Unable to open file $filename :$!\n";
    my @record;
    my $row =0;
    while (<DATA>) {
       chomp;
       #create Array one element per field
       my @line=split /,/; 
       # move values into multi-dimensional array
       $record[$row][0]=$line[0];
       $record[$row][1]=$line[1];
       $record[$row][2]=$line[2];
       $row++;
    }

    return (sort { $a->[0] <=> $b->[0] } @record);
}

[download]

PS--Any comments are welcome as I now am getting to know enough to *really* shoot myself in the foot :>

In reply to Re: Help with parsing through a comma delimted file by Desdinova
in thread Help with parsing through a comma delimted file by vonman

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