in reply to How can I sort this data on the first field

Since your numbers are the initial field, and are terminated by non-numbers, you can just treat the whole string as a number and Perl will Do The Right Thing: 
print sort {$a <=> $b} <DATA>;
__DATA__
30|microsoft
70|aol
76|netscape
5|trouble?
35|mozilla
40|opera

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No need for splitting or Schwartzian Transforms.
Caution: Contents may have been coded under pressure.

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Re^2: How can I sort this data on the first field
by NateTut (Deacon) on Apr 25, 2005 at 20:30 UTC
    Roy Johnson's solution works, but it is not warning free. The original problem seems to me to scream out for the use of a hash. Here is how I would have approached the problem:
    use strict;
use warnings;

print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";

my %someData;

while(<DATA>)
   {
   chomp();
   (my $key, my $value) = split(/\|/, $_, 2);
   $someData{$key} = $value;
   }

foreach (sort { $a <=> $b } keys %someData)
   {
   print "$_\{$someData{$_}\}\n";
   }

__DATA__
30|microsoft
70|aol
76|netscape
5|trouble?
35|mozilla
40|opera
100|FireFox

    [download]
[reply]
[d/l]

      It's not a hash that you want... it's probably an array of arrays. What if there were duplicate keys? your hash will eat them up and you'll end up with only the last entry.

      compare: 
      print "With Hash:\n\n";

$save = tell DATA;

while(<DATA>) {
     my ($k, $v) = split '\|';
     $hash{$k} = $v;
}
print "$_|$hash{$_}" for sort { $a <=> $b } keys %hash;

seek DATA, $save, 0;

print "\n\nWith array:\n\n";
while(<DATA>) {
     my ($k, $v) = split '\|';
     push @arr, [$k, $v];
}
print "$_->[0]|$_->[1]" for sort { $a->[0] <=> $b->[0] } @arr;

__DATA__
30|microsoft
70|aol
76|netscape
5|trouble?
35|mozilla
30|die microsoft
40|opera
100|FireFox
5|no more trouble

      [download]
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[reply]
[d/l]

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