How about:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $sortorder = 'azbycx';
my @list2 = qw(zulu charlie xray yankee bravo alpha); 

print join ',', @list2,"\n";
print join ',', sort {index($sortorder,substr($a,0,1)) <=> index($sort
+order,substr($b,0,1))} @list2
[download]

Update: Me stupid! This only sorts by the first character so it won't re-order qw(zvlu zulu) correctly (and I should have added a call to lc around the substr)! Note that alfie fixed the former bug here, if you add ChemBoy's fix (<=> to cmp) to that ;-).

--
I'd like to be able to assign to an luser