It sounds like you would be better off using a single array of hashrefs instead.

my @array = (
  { name => 'fred',  number => 2 },
  { name => 'bob',   number => 1 },
  { name => 'john',  number => 4 },
  { name => 'peter', number => 3 },
);
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Then you can sort them like so:

@array = sort { $a->{number} <=> $b->{number} } @array;
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