We sort of have a sort_by method in Sort::Maker. But I've never liked the api

you should try Sort::Key, it has a very simple API and it's faster and uses less memory than any other perl sorting technique: 

use Sort::Key qw(keysort);
my @sorted = keysort { genkey($_) } @data;

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In reply to Re^7: top ten things every Perl hacker should know by salva
in thread top ten things every Perl hacker should know by apotheon

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