What you want is a natural sort then. The usual approach is to create for each element to be sorted a string that sorts lexically but from which you can find the original string again. For example, you could build your string by having the padded string, a \0 and then the original string:

my @elements = map { join "\0", padded($_), $_ } @original;
@elements = sort { $a cmp $b } @elements;
my @sorted = map { ( split /\0/, $_ )[1] } @elements;

[download]

You can even chain it all together like the following:

my @elements = map { ( split /\0/, $_ )[1] }
               sort { $a cmp $b }
               map { join "\0", padded($_), $_ }
               @original;

[download]

In reply to Re: Data with Letter(s) & Number sort query by Corion
in thread Data with Letter(s) & Number sort query by merrymonk

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