The following may appeal:

use strict;
use warnings;

my @rawentries = (
"1topEndbit",
"2ndbit",
"endBit3",
"4thbit",
"5thbit",
"6OtherEndbit",
"7Bitsecondfromend",
"8Bitoneoffend",
"9Anyoldbit",
);

my @sorted;
my @last;

/Endbit/i ? push @last, $_ : push @sorted, $_ for @rawentries;
push @sorted, @last;
print join "\n", @sorted;
[download]

Prints:

2ndbit
4thbit
5thbit
7Bitsecondfromend
8Bitoneoffend
9Anyoldbit
1topEndbit
endBit3
6OtherEndbit
[download]

Thanks for that. Looks a good deal faster, too (which I guess is to be expected when a sort is involved, particularly if we start with initially-sorted or close-to-sorted data -- even with median partition selections).

Oops ! I see 5.8 has changed sort to allow a change from the quicksort to mergesort, so median-of-three need not be the point.. (Thanks for the pointer, Tanktalus.)

Can this sort usage be relied upon?

No, not entirely. You're asking that no other entries change places with respect to each other, except on the criteria of matching some regex (in your example, /Endbit/i). That requires a stable sort, which perl does not entirely guarantee in all circumstances. Look at the sort documentation and search for the word 'stable' to see what this means, and how you can get a stable sort at all times.

Am I missing obvious alternative(s) ?

I think the most obvious solution is just to seperate out all the entries into two arrays, and then merge them together afterwards. Something like this:

my (@match, @notmatch);
for (@rawentries)
{
  if (/Endbit/i) {
    push @match, $_;
  } else {
    push @notmatch, $_;
  }
}
my @newlist = (@notmatch, @match); # the ones that match float to the 
+bottom
[download]

use strict;
use warnings;

my @rawentries = (
   "1topEndbit",
   "2ndbit",
   "endBit3",
   "4thbit",
   "5thbit",
   "6OtherEndbit",
   "7Bitsecondfromend",
   "8Bitoneoffend",
   "9Anyoldbit");

print
   map  {"$_->[0]\n"}
   sort
   {
      $a->[1] <=> $b->[1] ||
      $a->[2] <=> $b->[2]
   }
   map
   {
      [
         $rawentries[$_],
         $rawentries[$_] =~ /Endbit/i ? 1 : 0,
         $_
      ]
   }
   0 .. $#rawentries;
[download]

When run it produces

2ndbit
4thbit
5thbit
7Bitsecondfromend
8Bitoneoffend
9Anyoldbit
1topEndbit
endBit3
6OtherEndbit
[download]

Cheers,

JohnGG

print join "\n",
@rawentries[   # array slice to turn the indices back to the values (c
+ould use map, too)
    sort {
        ($rawentries[$a] =~ /Endbit/i) <=> ($rawentries[$b] =~ m/Endbi
+t/i)  # sort first using the index's array value matching against a r
+egex and sort against the return. non-matches go higher; matches go l
+ower
        || $a <=> $b     # default to just sorting the index values to
+ maintain order w/in bit/not-bit chunks
    } 0 .. $#rawentries   # sort the indices
]
;
[download]