You can also move your updating right into the block passed to sort:

    my $last_time = time;
    sort {
            if (time - $last_time > 1) {
                $mw->update();
            };
            $a <=> $b
         } @list;
[download]

Alternatively, think about caching the search comparisons or creating a string key to sort on. That might be much faster than repeated field accesses:

for (@items) {
    push @$_, deaccent( $_->[$selected+2] ) . $_->[$selected+2];
};
@items = sort { $a->[-1] cmp $b->[-1] } @items;
[download]