Well, you see... I'm not trying to sort based on numerical order. I'm trying to sort based on the original order of the arrays. Let's try this again:

my @array1 = qw(dog cat rat mouse);
my @array2 = qw(dog rat mouse bird);
my @array3 = qw(cat rat fish mouse);
[download]

The output would then be:

dog cat rat mouse bird fish
[download]

Here, fish should come before mouse, and before bird.
So, I'm not sorting numerically, and I'm not sorting alphabetically... I'm trying to preserve the order of the original arrays...

To make this (perhaps) a little more clear, here's my specific problem. I'm taking data sets, with questions, and each question has a unique identifier, a GUID. For the most part, for each data set, the GUIDs will be in the same order, but every now and then, they change a question and assign a new GUID. Or, they insert a new question into the middle.

I need to combine all the data sets, and attempt to preserve the natural order of the questions.

Does that make a bit more sense?

---

---

• Are you posting in the right place? Check out Where do I post X? to know for sure.
• Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags. Currently these include the following:

  <code> <a> <b> <big> <blockquote> <br /> <dd> <dl> <dt> <em> <font> <h1> <h2> <h3> <h4> <h5> <h6> <hr /> <i> <li> <nbsp> <ol> <p> <small> <strike> <strong> <sub> <sup> <table> <td> <th> <tr> <tt> <u> <ul>

• Snippets of code should be wrapped in <code> tags not <pre> tags. In fact, <pre> tags should generally be avoided. If they must be used, extreme care should be taken to ensure that their contents do not have long lines (<70 chars), in order to prevent horizontal scrolling (and possible janitor intervention).
• Want more info? How to link or How to display code and escape characters are good places to start.