may I add that a Schwartzian Transform might help speeding up the sort. Then the split doesn't have to be done over and over again. This leads to

my @sorted_keys = map  {$_->[0]}
                  sort {$a->[1] <=> $b->[1]
                     || $a->[2] <=> $b->[2]
                     || $a->[3] <=> $b->[3]
                     || $a->[4] <=> $b->[4]}
                  map  { [ $_, split /\./ ] }
                  keys %ip;
foreach (@sorted_keys) {
  # do something
}
[download]

Instead of splitting one could also use the MZSanford's suggestion and sort on a zeropadded string in the transformation.

Update:
The code above was written to resemble as closely as possible davorg's original subroutine. For better solutions (in terms of performance) see blakem's and davorg's responses to my post.

-- Hofmator

---

---

Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!

Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.

Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.

Please read these before you post! —

• How do I compose an effective node title?
• How do I post a question effectively?
• Markup in the Monastery

Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:

a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr

You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)

	For:		Use:
	&		&
	<		&lt;
	>		&gt;
	[		&#91;
	]		&#93;

Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?

See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.