hash sorting

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

Dear Perlmonks,

I would like to sort a hash combining two criteria:

- first by the hash key's string length
- and then by the hash key value, decreasing

Here is the sample data:

hard drive => 26
hard unit => 12
hard disk drive => 15
hard disk drive uni => 21
hard disk drive unit => 11

I'm using the following function to sort a hash by its value decreasingly:

sub hashValueDescendingNum {
$count{$b} <=> $count{$a};
}
[download]

But I fail combining the two above mentioned criteria.

The output should look like

hard disk drive unit => 11
hard disk drive uni => 21
hard disk drive => 15
hard drive => 26
hard unit => 12

Thank you for your help.
Larry

Comment on hash sorting Download Code

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re: hash sorting by ikegami (Patriarch) on Jan 25, 2009 at 17:07 UTC
`sub hashValueDescendingNum { length($b) <=> length($a) \|\| $count{$b} <=> $count{$a} }` [download] On "ties", `<=>` returns zero, causing the RHS of the `\|\|` to be evaluated.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^2: hash sorting by Anonymous Monk on Jan 26, 2009 at 18:30 UTC
thank you very much	[reply]