Hi, I have a subroutine that sorts a passed array. The array elements are hash references resulting from a "selectall_arrayref" DBI query against a SQL db. The sort routine selects the sort method (via separate subs) based on input flags. One of the fields I sort with is a "date" field where the dates come in the format "YYYY.MM.DD". I want to numerically sort these, which requires stripping the periods before passing into the sort. Here is what I have now: 
sub sort_records {

    my $sort_routine;
    ($opt_g =~ /^t/i) ?    #flag setting sort order
        ($sort_routine = \&sort_by_title) :
        ($sort_routine = \&sort_by_date);
        
    foreach (@_) {  
        ($_->{'cleandate'} = $_->{'date'}) =~ s/\D//g;
    }      #do I need this?

    my @records =    map  { $_->[0] }
                    sort $sort_routine
                    map  { [ $_, $_->{'title'}, $_->{'cleandate'} ] } 
                     # or can I do it here?
                @_;
                
    return @records;
}

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(The sort_by_title and sort_by_date subs are basic sort functions straight from the perl cookbook. Only difference is the order in which they compare the fields).

So my question is, can I get rid of the "foreach" loop and somehow do the same thing right in the map, but without changing the values in the source?

(Any other critiques/suggestions also welcome).

In reply to Question about map function [ANSWERED] by automandc

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