How is the sort named after one of the many perlmonks here any more advantageous than a simple:
use strict;

my @data = (
['-r--r--r--','1','yourname','8318','2000-01-01','ant.txt'],
['-r--r--r--','1','yourname','11986','1992-12-30','tiger.txt'],
['-r--r--r--','1','yourname','72698','2004-03-03','duck.txt'],
['-r--r--r--','1','yourname','46852','1788-01-26','goose.txt']
);

print( "Which column to sort on?" );
my $column = ( <STDIN> =~ m/^\d+$/ );
exit( 1 ) if ( ! defined($column) );

my @sorted = sort { $a->[$column] cmp
                    $b->[$column] } @data;

print( join( "\n", map { join( ",", @{$_} )
                         } @sorted ) );

[download]

IE, just select the column (or hashref) you want to sort on.

update: I very much like kelan's answer to this post, it indeed shows one area where this other process comes in useful.

In reply to Re^2: What is "Schwartzian Transform" by monarch
in thread What is "Schwarzian Transform" (aka Schwartzian) by GrandFather

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