The hashkeys are not stored sorted, no. But, in doing a sort (and I could be wrong), Perl doesn't necessarily pull all the data into memory. If it does, then I would certainly accept help in getting Perl to do the sort in the way you're describing.
My criteria for good software:
  1. Does it work?
  2. Can someone else come in, make a change, and be reasonably certain no bugs were introduced?

In reply to Re^3: Sorting data that don't fit in memory (DBM::Deep) by dragonchild
in thread Sorting data that don't fit in memory by jeroenes

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