cyrus_dlx has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Hi, i have an array of hashes and need it sorted by one of the fields in the hash. For instance i build my structure this way:
my @people= ();
my @names = qw(jack peter smith jason patrick sylvia randa debbie dian
+e 
john gina solomon fances jojo kwame nana esi francis ato justice);

for my $i (0 .. $#names) {
   my %hash = ();
   $hash{"age"} = int(rand 75) + 1;
   $hash{"name"} = $names[$i];
   push (@people, \%hash);
}

[download]
and for easy printing of what we got: 
# some sort algorithm goes here
@sorted = sort by_name @people; 
for $i (0 .. $#sorted) {
   my %person = %{$sorted[$i]};
   print "$person{name} is $person{age} years old.\n";
}

[download]

Here i need @people sorted by either the "name" or "age" field. Any ideas are welcome
Thanks all!!

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Sorting an array of hashes by hash field
by holli (Abbot) on Apr 01, 2005 at 00:37 UTC
    @sorted=sort { $a->{name} cmp $b->{name} } @people;


    holli, /regexed monk/
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[d/l]
Re: Sorting an array of hashes by hash field
by tlm (Prior) on Apr 01, 2005 at 00:43 UTC

    See this post. Using the nomenclature I used in that post: 

    sub property {  return $_[ 0 ]->{ name } }
@sorted =
  map  { $_->[ 0 ] }
  sort { $a->[ 1 ] cmp $b->[ 1 ] }
  map  { [ $_, property( $_ ) ] }
  @people;

    [download]
    See the post linked above for the details. If you really insist on the less efficient approach you outlined, then 
    sub by_name { $a->{ name } cmp $b->{ name } }

    [download]

    the lowliest monk

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[d/l]
[select]
      Thanks for both responses, wow, didnt think it was that easy. I wouldnt have figured that out given a year. Thanks ;)
[reply]
Re: Sorting an array of hashes by hash field
by Roy Johnson (Monsignor) on Apr 01, 2005 at 01:44 UTC
[reply]

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