Your "stupid plan" is the heart of the Guttman-Rosler Transform (GRT; see Advanced Sorting - GRT - Guttman Rosler Transform). This approach is based on the fact that using the default lexicographic sorting of sort is faster than using a sort subroutine block, so multi-key GRT sorts will tend to outstrip ST sorts as the array size grows beyond some threshold.

Just think, if you had come up with this stupid idea a few years ago, your own name might now be immortalized in the annals of Perl!

The original paper is A Fresh Look at Efficient Perl Sorting, also linked by demerphq's link above.

In reply to Re^2: Sort problems by AnomalousMonk
in thread Sort problems by erez_ez

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