I'm unsure of what you mean. grep is used to filter a list. sort is used to change the order of a list. Except for some very unusual definitions of sort it should never change the size of the list.

You are asking how to condense code, but not really telling what you are trying to accomplish. It is quite possible that there is a simpler/more concise solution, if we knew the problem, not your current solution.

As for improving your solution, I would probably apply the Schwartzian transform to reduce the number of regex applications, but that won't be shorter.

my @compounds=("C3H8O2",
           "C6H10O5",
           "C36H62O31",
           "C5H16N2",
           "C10H11N5O6P",
           "C9H11N3O7P",
           "C3H9N2O2");
print join("\n",
         map { $_->[0] }
         sort { $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] }
         map { [ $_, (/C(\d+)/)[0] }
         grep { $_ =~ /P/} 
         @compounds
),"\n";

[download]
G. Wade

In reply to Re: Condensing a grep into a sort by gwadej
in thread Condensing a grep into a sort by seaver

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