Your code should read: 
%person = (
             firstname => ['name1', 'name2', 'name3'],
             lastname => ['lname1', 'lname2', 'lname3'],
             city => ['city1','city2','city3']
          );

[download]
or 
$person = {
             firstname => ['name1', 'name2', 'name3'],
             lastname => ['lname1', 'lname2', 'lname3'],
             city => ['city1','city2','city3']
          };

[download]
If you really need your data to look like this you can sort it like this. 
%person = (
             firstname => ['name2', 'name1', 'name3'],
             lastname => ['lname2', 'lname1', 'lname3'],
             city => ['city2','city1','city3']
          );

for (map {$_->[1] }
      sort {$a->[0] cmp $b->[0] }
       map { [$person{firstname}[$_], $_] }
        (0 .. scalar @{$person{firstname}} - 1)) {
    printf("%s %s %s\n",
           $person{firstname}[$_],
           $person{lastname}[$_],
           $person{city}[$_]);
}

[download]
-- gam3
A picture is worth a thousand words, but takes 200K.

In reply to Re: How do i sort a hash or array? by gam3
in thread How do i sort a hash or array? by isha

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.