Here is one approach that may work:

#!/usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;

my @array = (
    [ 1, 'chuck',  'z' ],
    [ 2, 'paul',   'b' ],
    [ 3, 'adam',   'c' ],
    [ 4, 'rob',    'p' ],
    [ 5, 'julius', 'w' ],
    [ 6, 'bryan',  't' ]
);

foreach my $i ( sort { $a->[1] cmp $b->[1] } @array ) {
    print join( " - ", @{$i} ), "\n";
}
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If it were a numeric comparison, the cmp above would be replaced by the "spaceship operator" ( '<=>' ).

When run, the following results were obtained:

3 - adam - c
6 - bryan - t
1 - chuck - z
5 - julius - w
2 - paul - b
4 - rob - p
[download]

Hope that helps.

Update: 05 Feb 2005

Changed variable in loop from $a to $i, to avoid confusion with the variables used by sort.