Sorting an AoA?

dayton has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I know you can sort an array using "sort(@array);" but this doesn't seem to work with an array of arrays though.
How can I sort my AoA using the first element of each array as the sort criteria?

@array=(
     ["def","456","$%^"],
     ["abc","123","!@#"],
     ["ghi","789","&*("]
     );

#code to sort the aoa here

for $i ( 0 .. $#array ) {
     print "$array[$i][0]\n";
}
[download]

Should output:

abc
def
ghi

--
Ah, thanks! So simple yet I couldn't figure it out.

Comment on Sorting an AoA? Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: Sorting an AoA? by FunkyMonk (Bishop) on Feb 12, 2008 at 18:54 UTC
`@array = sort { $a->[0] cmp $b->[0] } @array; # ascending #@array = sort { $b->[0] cmp $a->[0] } @array; # descending` [download] Update: `for my $i ( 0 .. $#array )` isn't a very Perlish way of iterating over an array. Both `for my $elem ( @array ) { print "$elem->[0]\n"; }` [download] and `print "$_->[0]\n" for @array;` [download] are considered more idiomatic.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: Sorting an AoA? by kyle (Abbot) on Feb 12, 2008 at 18:57 UTC
`my @array=( ["def","456","$%^"], ["abc","123","!@#"], ["ghi","789","&("] ); #code to sort the aoa here @array = sort { $a->[0] cmp $b->[0] } @array; for my $i ( 0 .. $#array ) { print "$array[$i][0]\n"; } __END__ abc def ghi` [download] Update:* See also How to sort array by columns maintaining the rows? (for C style arrays) and How do I sort a multidimensional arrays?	[reply] [d/l]
Re: Sorting an AoA? by sh1tn (Priest) on Feb 13, 2008 at 00:17 UTC
sort	[reply]