Sinistral,
For an ordered hash, there's Tie::IxHash, which doesn't have specific search functions, but does let you reorder the data structure by key

Tie::IxHash maintains insertion order which is very unlikely to be sorted order indicated by the OP. Yes, it does have rudimentary manual sort capability (asciibetical sort by keys or values). It also has the ability to manually reorder the keys arbitrarily but the user must first do the sort. If what you need is a sorted hash and not an insertion order hash, then you should use Tie::Hash::Sorted which is designed for that purpose and also has a number of optimizations.

Disclaimer: I am the author of Tie::Hash::Sorted

Cheers - L~R

In reply to Re^2: maintaining a sorted structure by Limbic~Region
in thread maintaining a sorted structure by Anonymous Monk

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