Assuming that you got the last two strings in your sorted example the wrong way around; Ie. '12h' should sort before '123' according to the logic of the rest of the example? (Ignore this if you didn't, but explain better :)

Using an ST. Transliterate the strings to map the characters to the collating sequence desired, sort and then discard the transliterated values:

@a = qw[  ased12 frtg Frth zdcs 123 12h awq ];;

print for map { 
    $_->[0] 
} sort{ 
    $a->[1] cmp $b->[1] 
} map{ 
    (my $t = $_) =~ tr[aAbBcCdDeEfFgGhHiIjJkKlLmMnNoOpPqQrRsStTuUvVwWx
+XyYzZ0-9]
                      [\x00-\x3e]; 
    [ $_, $t ] 
} @a;;

ased12
awq
frtg
Frth
zdcs
12h
123
[download]

Update: Actually, skip the ST. Just tranliterating on the way in and back again on the way out works out much (65%) quicker:

@a = qw[  ased12 frtg Frth zdcs 123 12h awq ];
print for map{
    tr[\x00-\x3e][aAbBcCdDeEfFgGhHiIjJkKlLmMnNoOpPqQrRsStTuUvVwWxXyYzZ
+0-9];
    $_;
} sort map{
    tr[aAbBcCdDeEfFgGhHiIjJkKlLmMnNoOpPqQrRsStTuUvVwWxXyYzZ0-9][\x00-\
+x3e];
    $_;
} @a;

ased12
awq
frtg
Frth
zdcs
12h
123
[download]

use Encode qw(encode decode);
...
my @sorted = map { decode('cp1047', $_) } sort (map  { encode('cp1047'
+, $_) } @strings);
[download]

Esteemed Monks,

Thanks for the suggestionsSorry for not formatting the question properly and not listing my code.

The code works but I am facing another problem.

I am sorting a file that it more than 400MB size and using multiple keys. While executing, the sort fails with core dump and sometimes illegal instruction message.

I did some investigation and found out that it is due to insufficeint memory.

I am running it on AIX server and when I did ulimit -a it gave memory as 65536 bytes. I have unlimited file size permission. I reduced the size of the input file to about 60 K and the sort worked. I have checked and I can't use malloc() or reset it to be used during runtime.

   use strict;
   use Encode qw(encode decode);
   ### Define the sort key here ###
   # Sorts in ascending order.
    sub key1  { ( substr( $a, 3, 17 )) cmp ( substr( $b, 3, 17 )); }
     # Sorts  descending order.
    sub key2  { ( substr( $b, 20, 2 )) cmp ( substr( $a, 20, 2 )); }
    #
    ### Sort processing starts ###
    my @infile = <>; # Reads file
    ### Multiple sort keys can be defined and sorted in the order of t
+he key
    my @sorted = map { decode('cp1047', $_) } sort { key1 || key2 } (m
+ap
    { encode('cp1047', $_) } @infile);
    print @sorted;
[download]

Is there a more efficient way to reduce memory usage?

Do a GRT through /bin/sort.

# ...
use IPC::Open2 'open2';
my( $chaos, $sorted );
my $pid= open2( $sorted, $chaos, 'sort' );
while(  <>  ) {
    my $ascii= encode( 'cp1047', $_ );
    print $chaos substr($ascii,3,17), substr($ascii,20,2), $_;
}
close $chaos;
while(  <$sorted>  ) {
    print substr( $_, 19 );
}
[download]

or thereabouts. It looks like your EBCDIC file is using ASCII newlines, which simplifies things.

- tye        

I have been trying to emulate EBCDIC sort in perl but without any success.

The Wikipedia entry for EBCDIC has a code conversion chart; if all else fails, you could use that.

I also recommend looking at perldoc perlebcdic.

EDIT: alright, downvote away if you like, but I was trying to be helpful here, not rude. There have been a lot of these "omg pls help kthxbye!" posts recently. I thought it might be a cultural thing -- IRC and most message boards have different standards...