What you are looking for is the sort function.

However, I think you are over complicating things somewhat.
Consider the following: 

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;

my %people;

while (my $line = <DATA>) {
    chomp($line);
    my ($person, $occupation, $hours) = split /\s+/, $line;
    $people{$person}{occupation} = $occupation;
    $people{$person}{hours} = $hours;
}

for my $person (sort keys %people) {
    print "Name: $person\n";
    print "Job: $people{$person}{occupation}\n";
    print "Hours: $people{$person}{hours}\n";
    print "------------------\n";
}

__DATA__
Mike Plumber 80
Laura Programmer 60
Mark Sales 70
Jeremy Cook 65

[download]
Does this do what you want?

Cheers,
Darren :)

In reply to Re: Sort lists/Data Structures by McDarren
in thread Sort lists/Data Structures by mmontemuro

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