I'm not certain how to approach this problem: split or regex? hash or sort()?

I'd add 'databases' to that list of possible solutions although for most circumstances the other answers in this thread are better.

#!perl -w
use strict;
use DBI;
my $aryref = [ ['Item1','2 foo','2 bar']
             , ['Item2','0 foo','1 bar']
             , ['Item3','1 foo','3 bar']
             , ['Item4','1 foo','2 bar']
             ];
my $dbh=DBI->connect('dbi:AnyData:');
$dbh->ad_import('tmp','ARRAY',$aryref,{col_names=>'c1,c2,c3'});
printf "%s\n",join ' ',@$_ for @{ $dbh->selectall_arrayref(
    'SELECT * FROM tmp ORDER BY c3 DESC, c2 DESC'
)};
__END__
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