In that case, you can zip the arrays together before sorting them, then unzip them afterwards.

Something like...

use Data::Dumper;

my @array_items = ("dog" ,"desk" ,"cow");
my @array_items_weight = ("20" ,"10", "150");

# zip them together
my @combined =
    map { [$array_items[$_], $array_items_weight[$_]] }
    0 .. $#array_items;

# sort the zipped array
my @sorted =
    sort { $a->[0] cmp $b->[0] }
    @combined;

# unzip again
@array_items = map { $_->[0] } @sorted;
@array_items_weight = map { $_->[1] } @sorted;

print "\@array_items is now... ";
print Dumper \@array_items;

print "\@array_items_weight is now... ";
print Dumper \@array_items_weight;
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The above produces the following output...

@array_items is now... $VAR1 = [
          'cow',
          'desk',
          'dog'
        ];
@array_items_weight is now... $VAR1 = [
          '150',
          '10',
          '20'
        ];

This solution assumes that @array_items and @array_items_weight are equal in length.

Zipping them together is somewhat ugly code, but with the assistance of List::MoreUtils it can be made more beautiful:

my @combined = pairwise { [$a, $b] } @array_items, @array_items_weight
+;
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