@sorted = sort {$$a{"key"} <=> $$b{"key"} } @unsorted;
[download]

@sorted = sort {$$a{"least_signifigant_key"} <=> $$b{"least_signifigan
+t_key"}} @unsorted;
[...]
@moresorted = sort{$$a{"most_signifigant_key"} <=> $$b{"most_signifiga
+nt_key"}} @sorted;
[download]

sub multi_key_sort {  # pass me two references to arrays
 my $array = shift;   # the first to the array that needs sorting..
 my $keys = shift;    # the second to an array of keys to sort by
 for my $key (@$keys) {
   @$array = sort {$$a{$key} cmp $$b{$key}} @$array;
 }
 return @$array;
}

my @sorted_array = &multi_key_sort(\@unsorted_array,\@array_of_keys);
# @array_of_keys in order from least to most signifigant
[download]

Actually...

sub this {
  my @array = @{(shift)} ;
  my $keys = shift ;
  for my $key (@$keys) {
    @array = sort {$$a{$key} cmp $$b{$key}} @array;
  }
  return @array;
}
[download]

would be a little cleaner. The original code would return a sorted array AND leave you with a sorted @unsorted. This way, by dereferencing the array, it will just return a sorted array, and leave @unsorted alone.

I like the example from perlfaq4:

Here we'll do a reverse numeric sort by value, and if 
two keys are identical, sort by length of key, and if 
that fails, by straight ASCII comparison of the keys 
(well, possibly modified by your locale -- see perllocale). 

@keys = sort {
    $hash{$b} <=> $hash{$a}
        ||
    length($b) <=> length($a)
        ||
    $a cmp $b
} keys %hash;
[download]

as our peers above have pointed out ($$a{$key}) does the work in your case, but the idea of or'ing with a final cmp will probably get better results when you can't tell what's in those arrays.

#!/home/bbq/bin/perl
# Trust no1!

Awesome!

Exactly what I was looking for!!! Wow!

Another reference is the documentation for sort itself.

I'm not sure what you mean by sorting the array based on those keys in that order. Perhaps you could provide an example data structure before and after the sort?

%{array[1]} = { key1 => 3, key2 => 2, key3 => "test" };
%{array[2]} = { key1 => 2, key2 => 1, key3 => "test2" };
%{array[3]} = { key1 => 3, key2 => 1, key3 => "test3" };
%{array[4]} = { key1 => 1, key2 => 1, key3 => "test4" };

&sortarrayofhashes(\@array,"key1","key2");
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now the arrays look like this:


# NOTE, the following is not perlcode, just statement of fact

$array[1]{key1} == 1
$array[1]{key2} == 1
$array[1]{key3} == test4
$array[2]{key1} == 2
$array[2]{key2} == 1
$array[2]{key3} == test2
$array[3]{key1} == 3
$array[3]{key2} == 1
$array[3]{key3} == test3
$array[4]{key1} == 3
$array[4]{key2} == 2
$array[4]{key3} == test
[download]

So that's the result I'm looking to be able to obtain. THnaks