If you have trouble understanding the second one, you should look up the phrase "Schwartzian transform", when you have some free time, and read up on the technique. Becomming comfortable with this is something that will help you to think like an advanced Perl programmer. It's not just the technique itself, but the paradigms that it represents, notably, the idea of transforming a list, which is a very generally applicable thing and something Perl is very good for doing, so that it is something every really advanced Perl programmer needs to understand.

However, ad interim, you should use the technique that you understand already.

We also have some good information here at the Monastery. Unfortunately, it's not as easy to find as it should be.
Here's a couple of very useful threads:

• Understanding transformation sorts (ST, GRT), the details
• Resorting to Sorting
We're building the house of the future together.

the # needed to be escaped

I don't believe you. Pound signs never need to be escaped in regexes, and it shouldn't make any difference if they are or not. I invite you to show us your exact code — the one that behaves differently depending on whether the pound sign is escaped or not.

Sorry, but you're wrong.

$_ = "SomecomplexREhereandthenafoobar";
if (/Some complex RE here and then a # to ignore/x) {
  print "Escaping that # would have mattered\n";
}
[download]

Yeah, o.k., /x. I lose. ;-) But I wonder - was the OP using /x?