Nice idea--I propose the following modification, to dump extra words at the end (and to use string comparison, of course):

my $sortstr = join('', @list);
my @sorted_list = sort {
 rindex($sortstr,substr($b,0,1)) <=> rindex($sortstr,substr($a,0,1))
        ||
        $a cmp $b
    } @list2;

[download]

Of course, you might want words that start with letters not in the list to be at the front, in which case, alphie's solution is preferable (aside from using <=> instead of cmp).

Update: doh! It doesn't do what I thought it did! Fix coming...
Fix here: 

my $sortstr = join('', @list);
my @sorted_list = sort {
    my ($tmp1,$tmp2);
 (($tmp1 = index($sortstr,substr($a,0,1))) >= 0 ? $tmp1 : length($sort
+str))
    <=> 
 (($tmp2 = index($sortstr,substr($b,0,1))) >= 0 ? $tmp2 : length($sort
+str))
        ||
        $a cmp $b
    } @list2;

[download]


If God had meant us to fly, he would *never* have give us the railroads.
    --Michael Flanders

In reply to Re: Re: sorting based on a list by ChemBoy
in thread sorting based on a list by mbond

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