sub my_sort_key {
 my $file = lc(shift);
 chomp $file;
 my $the_file =~ s/^the\s+//;
 $the_file;
}

my @files = map { $$_[1] } sort { $$a[0] cmp $$b[0] }
 map { [ my_sort_key($_), $_ ] } <INF>;
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Update:Fixed. And I figure you probably only want to ignore 'The' if its a word, not a word prefix.(Ahh, wog is too quick for me :-)