Hi. Seems that you need to sort first by alpha-prefix and then numerically. The suggestion below assumes that all items to be sorted have a format that matches m/(\D+)(\d+)/ completely.
See also What is "Schwarzian Transform" (aka Schwartzian) and Schwartzian Transform 

use strict;

my @input = qw(d3 d1 d10 d2 d20 d21 a3 d100 d201 a10 a1);


my @sorted =
  map  { $_->[0] . $_->[1] }             # 3) put together elems.
  sort { $a->[0] cmp $b->[0]             # 2) sort alpha prefix
         ||                              #    (if equal, then)
         $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] }           #    sort numeric suffix
  map  { m/(\D+)(\d+)/; [ $1, $2 ] }     # 1) split alpa/numeric-parts
  @input;

print join "\n", @sorted, "\n";

__END__
a1
a3
a10
d1
d2
d3
d10
d20
d21
d100
d201

[download]

In reply to Re: Simple sort query by Perlbotics
in thread Simple sort query by Anonymous Monk

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