You could sort each array reference individually, and then use some hybrid "merge" on them. But I'd suggest flattening them, and then unflattening them: 
my @flat = sort { $a <=> $b } map @$_, @orig;
my @sorted = map [ $orig[3*$_ .. 3*$_+2] ], 0 .. $#flat/3;

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japhy -- Perl and Regex Hacker

In reply to Re: Sorting multi dimensional arrays by japhy
in thread Sorting multi dimensional arrays by Anonymous Monk

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