And if you really want a subroutine... 
use Test::More qw/no_plan/;

my $unsorted = [
    [ qw/1  3  5  6  2/ ],
    [ qw/3  4  5  6  7/ ],
    [ qw/1  2  3  4  5/ ],
    [ qw/5  6  7  8  8/ ],
    [ qw/1  2  3  4  5/ ],
    [ qw/2  2  2  2  2/ ],
    [ qw/1  1  2  4  5/ ],
    [ qw/2  3  4  5  6/ ],
];

my $expected = [
    [ qw/1  1  2  4  5/ ],
    [ qw/1  2  3  4  5/ ],
    [ qw/1  2  3  4  5/ ],
    [ qw/1  3  5  6  2/ ],
    [ qw/2  2  2  2  2/ ],
    [ qw/2  3  4  5  6/ ],
    [ qw/3  4  5  6  7/ ],
    [ qw/5  6  7  8  8/ ],
];

my $sorted = sortSub($unsorted, 0, 1, 3);

is_deeply $sorted, $expected;

sub sortSub {
    my @array = @{ +shift };

    my @sorted = sort {
        for my $ix ( @_ ) {
            my $cmp = $a->[$ix] <=> $b->[$ix];
            return $cmp if $cmp;
        }
        return 0;
    } @array;
    return \@sorted;
}

[download]

Update: Fixed a mistake spotted by dbmathis Narveson.

In reply to Re: How would I sort a two-dimensional array by multiple columns? by FunkyMonk
in thread How would I sort a two-dimensional array by multiple columns? by dbmathis

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