Howdy all-

Quick question for the monks ... I have a hash that is basically setup as follows: 
%myhash = ( 'aNumber.aCharacters' => 
            { 'bNumber.bCharacters' =>
              {
                'one'   => $valA,
                'two'   => $valB,
                'three' => $valC,
                'four'  => $valD,
                'five'  => $valE,
                'six'   => $valF
              }
            }
);

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I can print information I wish by making a call such as: 
print $myhash{'1.AB'}{'2.AB'}{'one'}, "\n";

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What I'd like to be able to do is sort the hash by the first key (aNumber.aCharacters in the first example ... 1.AB in the second print example). If possible, I would then like to sort by the second key ... then I would print/use the rest of the availble information ('one','two',etc...).

My problem is that I have many random possibilties for the first and second hash keys ... they could be anything similar to the following: 
1.AB
121.ABC1
52.ABC2

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I would like the sort to be 'by number' of the digits before the period. I'm not sure a simple 'cmp' or '<=>' will do the trick ... and I can't figure out what to do. I searched for 'multidimensional hash sorting' on this site, but none of the questions really covered this question.

So, I suppose the short version of this question: how can I sort the above hash using the digits before the period of the first two hash keys? :)

In reply to sorting a complex multidimensional hash by envirodug

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