I have an array whose elements look like this:

Yes, on the surface its an array, but conceptually, it seems like you are working with a three column table, with dashes and commas as your field separators.

If my inference is correct, then you will probably want the ability to sort on *any* column, not just the 'bar' column. With this in mind, the following code offers a way to manage your data more like a table. You can sort it, format it, select for individual fields and do all the other stuff people always ask for, but didn't realize they wanted at the beginning.

If my inference is wrong, you can ignore this post.

### INIT pragma
    use strict;
    use warnings;

### INIT vars
    my  $data_table     = [];
    my  @aLines         = (<DATA>);

### MUNGE raw data into a table
    @{$data_table} = map{
    my @aFlds = split /\s*-\s*|\s*,\s*/,$_;
        if(scalar @aFlds != 3){die"ERROR: bad data"}
        chomp$aFlds[2];
        {fld0 => $aFlds[0], fld1 => $aFlds[1], fld2 => $aFlds[2],};
    }@aLines;

### SORT the table or do whatever else you want
### See Also 4.15. Sorting a List by Computable Field, Perl Cookbook
### By Tom Christiansen & Nathan Torkington; ISBN 1-56592-243-3

my  @ordered = sort { $a->{fld2} cmp $b->{fld2} } @{$data_table};

map{print "$_->{fld0} ;;; $_->{fld1} ;;; $_->{fld2}\n"}@ordered;


__DATA__
Item3 - 1 foo, 3 bar
Item1 - 2 foo, 2 bar
Item4 - 1 foo, 2 bar
Item2 - 0 foo, 1 bar
[download]