Hi Monks. Can someone explain why this works:

use strict;
use warnings;

my @data;
push @data, { name => "Item A", price => 9.99 };
push @data, { name => "Item B", price => 4.99 };
push @data, { name => "Item C", price => 7.5};
my @sorted = sort {$a->{price} <=> $b->{price}} @data;
print join "\n", map {$_->{name}." - ".$_->{price}} @sorted;

[download]

and this doesn't:

use strict;
use warnings;

my @data;
my %recordset;

$recordset{name} = "Item A";
$recordset{price} = 9.99;

push @data, \%recordset;

$recordset{name} = "Item B";
$recordset{price} = 4.99;

push @data, \%recordset;

$recordset{name} = "Item C";
$recordset{price} = 7.5;

push @data, \%recordset;


my @sorted = sort {$a->{price} <=> $b->{price}} @data;
print join "\n", map {$_->{name}." - ".$_->{price}} @sorted;

[download]

the first one outputs this:

Item B - 4.99
Item C - 7.5
Item A - 9.99


And the second outputs this:

Item C - 7.5
Item C - 7.5
Item C - 7.5

In reply to Newbie hash/sorting question by msensay

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.