(add shebang to taste)
use strict;
use warnings;

open(FILE,"file.txt");
my @Records = <FILE>; 

@Records = sort {$a cmp $b} @Records;

for my $record(@Records) {
    print "$record \n";
}
[download]

Between them, strict and warnings would have sorted out most of your problems, including missing semi-colons.

You may find help in threads such as #146936 using the Montastery's "Search" function (top of the page).

Update: Added output statement; rephrased second para after the code for clarity.

In the *nix world...

cat file.txt | sort -k1
[download]

Or in winders-land...

type file.txt | sort /+1
[download]

Note that because you want to sort by the first "field", you don't even need to specify the sort field, as both winders and *nix sort do that by default. So just piping the file through sort is sufficient.

I wouldn't even bother using Perl for this.

In the *nix world...

Agreed, but it's not like using perl for this is so bad (esp. for the poor M$ users who don't know/have the unix tools):

perl -e "print sort <>" file.txt
[download]

But -- curious discovery -- depending on the file content, this can produce somewhat different output from the unix "sort file.txt": unix sort puts empty lines first, whereas perl's sort puts them between the lines that start with tab and the ones that start with space or other characters ("\x0a" and "\x0d\x0a" come after "\x09" and before "\x20"). That is, in its simplest form, the perl version takes line termination characters into account for sorting, but unix sort does not. Doing a proper emulation of unix sort with perl takes a bit more work. So far, this is the "best" I can do (it does work -- it's just a tad ugly):

perl -e "print sort {chomp($x=$a); chomp($y=$b); $x cmp $y} <>" file.t
+xt
[download]

(I'm not sure, but I think it would work using double-quotes in the standard M$ shell, whereas a unix shell (e.g. bash for windows) needs single quotes.)

perl -e "print sort {chomp($x=$a); chomp($y=$b); $x cmp $y} <>" file.txt

The following is also a bit challenged in the beauty stakes but avoids the repetitive chomp'ing of the lines. Tested under both M$ shell (with double quotes) and Solaris ksh (with single-quotes).

perl -e "print map{qq{$_$/}} sort map{chomp; $_} <>;" file.txt
[download]

I hope this is of interest.

Cheers,

JohnGG

Also, you might try dropping  use strict; use warnings; at the top of everything you do. I *think* that would have helped you spot the main problem a little bit sooner.

That all being said, I tried the following, and I got the results you were expecting.

use strict;
use warnings;

my @Records;

open(FILE,"file.txt");
while (<FILE>){
    @Records = <FILE>;
}

@Records = sort {$a cmp $b} @Records;

# and now to test.

my $i = 0;

while ($i <= $#Records){
    print "$Records[$i]\n";
    $i++;
}
[download]

Cheers!