I want to thank all of you for your help on this . Hi ikegami, I think your (update code) will be easier for me to eventually understand than the other code versions. I am open to any explanation/comments 1 thing I need to mention is that the data will be in an external file. Do I need to change the way your code opens up data?
That is this part

while (<DATA>)
to something like this???
========================================================
open (my $IN, 'myfile.dat') or die "$!";
my @data = <$IN>;
close $IN;
========================================================
I hope I am saying this correctly... I will also need to have all sorted data in a different file... I think something like
open (my $OUT, ">", 'output.dat') or die "$!";
then perhaps add $OUT to your print-output code
print ("$_->[0] $_->1,$_->2\n") for @data;
to
print $OUT("$_->[0] $_->1,$_->2\n") for @data;
would that work or am I out in left field? You guys a teriffic, thank you all again...

by the way is perl the best method to do this? I am curious about why there are so many languages, if 3 or 4 can do it all....Not sure if that is true tho... thx so much everyone Luke

pps Is there a way to know when I get a response from you guys, as in an email notice? peace!!!

In reply to Re^2: Sort then conditionally sort by lukez
in thread Sort then conditionally sort by lukez

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.