Hello, I came up with the following code (simplified example) and I'm wondering if you can think of a better way to do it. Grepping through the entire array once for each element in the first list seems incredibly wasteful, but I'm at a loss as to how to fix it. Basically, the first array is the order in which the user selected something. The Array of Hashes is the order in which stuff is pulled out of the database. I need to make sure the Array of Hashes is put in the same order the user selected the items.

Please note that it's just a coincidence that the first array is 1..5 in order, it's possible it could be in any other order.

Thanks in advance for any help! 
#!/usr/bin/perl

use warnings;
use strict;

use Data::Dumper;

my $array_ref = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

my $array_of_hashes_ref = [
    {key => 4, name => 'label4'},
    {key => 2, name => 'label2'},
    {key => 5, name => 'label5'},
    {key => 1, name => 'label1'},
    {key => 3, name => 'label3'}
];

# WANT:
# $array_of_hashes_ref = [
#   {key => 1, name => 'label1'},
#   {key => 2, name => 'label2'},
#   {key => 3, name => 'label3'}
#   {key => 4, name => 'label4'},
#   {key => 5, name => 'label5'},
# ];

my $new_array_ref;

for my $key (@$array_ref)
{
    push @$new_array_ref, grep {$_->{'key'} == $key} @$array_of_hashes
+_ref;
}

warn Dumper($new_array_ref);

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In reply to Sort AoH by another array by saberworks

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