I have approximately 5000 items. I like to group similar items together. My items are 'phrases' or 'words'. So list like (perl monks yahoo monk google aperl goxgle)) could be written after grouping as (perl aperl monks monk yahoo google goxgle). Preserving the order would be good but not neccessarily if it cannot be achieved. Of course, the sorting would help to some extent but not for the ultimate results. I like to use modules like String::Approx or others effectively.

Thanks artist