Roboticus,

Note that the output is still not in the preferred order. The preferred order is:

10/8
1.2/16
1.2.3/24
192.168/16
192.168.4/24
192.168.4.192/26
127.0.0.1/32

[download]

And this is happening because you are sorting based on network size first and if equal, going on to compare the IP address (which would simply say which one of either has a smaller decimal equivalent).

10/8 may have a big network size, but it is not a supernet for 172.16/16.

Also, my comparison is not that of single network address. I need to compare two hashes whose elements are network addresses. Anyways, I learnt that I can use custom expressions in place of cmp or <=> to perform sort operation.

my $acl = {};
$acl->{source}  = [];            # array of Network address e.g, [10/8
+,172.16/16]
$acl->{dest}    = [];          # same as above
$acl->{original}= 'unknown';   # A string for original ACL e.g, permit
+ ip any 10/8

# After I create a hash I will store the hash reference in an array

push @acl_grp, \%acl;

# After populating the array of hash refs I want to sort them
# I would do something similar to this

foreach $acl ( sort compare @acl_grp ){
    print $acl->{original},"\n";
}

# compare function is coded as
#   return -1 if $b is a supernet of $a
#   return 1 if $a is a supernet of $b
#   return 0 for all other cases, mimicking the behaviour of <=>
sub compare($$){some code};

[download]
Assuming that above code works, I expect to get a list of ACL's sorted in order. Now my problem is, how can I indent them depending on whether above node is a super ACL or an unrelated ACL.

In reply to Re^4: How to create a Tree::DAG_Node tree with sorted hash elements by benny_vroom
in thread How to create a Tree::DAG_Node tree with sorted hash elements by benny_vroom

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