If you take a look at sort, you see that you can do something like

sub deepsort {
  substr( $_[0], $p[0], $l[0]) cmp substr( $_[1], $p[0], $l[0] )
            ||
  substr( $_[0], $p[1], $l[1]) cmp substr( $_[1], $p[1], $l[1] )
            ||
....ad nauseum
}
@sorted = sort 'deepsort', @list;
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Of course it's better to build the deepsort from an eval and map.....

Jeroen
"We are not alone"(FZ)