If you add the following, right at the top of your sub (inside the curly braces, but before my ($a, $b, $type)...

  if (@_ == 2) {
    my ($type, $ref) = @_;
    $type =~ s/_/-/g;
    return sort { short_sorts($a, $b, $type) } @$ref;
  }
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Then it gives you an even shorter syntax for sorting:

 my @list = qw(red orange yellow green blue purple);
 my @sorted = short_sorts ci_a => \@list;
 print "@sorted\n";
 # says "blue green orange purple red yellow"
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It's probably also worth adding something like this:

croak "$type is not supported"
  if $type && !exists $sorts{$type};
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