You'll find that your s/// has changed your original data. And your 'sorted' array no longer has the word 'The'.

Update:And your map is a 'funny' way to write (thanks for pointing out another bug :-):

for (@array) {
 my $num = s/^The //;
 push @temp, $num;
}
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which DOES modify the original @array. And doesn't put the desired value into @temp ($num is the number of substitutions, which is 0 (undef) or 1).