use strict; use warnings;

use Data::Dumper; # nice

my @Data; # bad name, what does it store?

while(<DATA>){
    my($meth,$list,$count)= split ',';

    push @Data, { 'meth'=>$meth, 'list'=>$list, 'count'=>$count };

}
print "Unsorted:\n", Dumper( @Data ), "\n";

@Data = sort { $a->{'meth'} cmp $b->{'meth'} } @Data;
# swap $a and $b if you want the other direction

print "Sorted:\n", Dumper( @Data ), "\n";


__DATA__
def,phyton\tjavascript,2
abc,perl\terlang\tlisp,1
ghi,arc\truby\tprolog,3
[download]

also, avoid using $a and $b when not sorting. They will confuse you, because they are global. Not a problem in your code here though.
hth

Update: You had another question which I overlooked:
the value you get, 2HASH(0x225e44), tells you that you have not a value, but a hash, which will have to be dereferenced to get at whatever is in the hash, for example using the keys function:

my %dd;
$dd{'1'}{'2'}{'3'}="hi";
$dd{'1'}{'3'}{'5'}="hello";
print "\nkeys in hash: ", join ' ', keys %{ $dd{'1'} };
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Thank you, you made my day!

Remember that each element you are passing into the sort routine is a hash reference so you have to de-reference to get to the element you want to sort by. This should do what you want.

my @Data = ();
while ( <FH> )
{
    chomp;
    my ( $meth, $list, $count ) = split m{,};
    push @Data, {
       meth  => $meth,
       list  => $list,
       count => $count,
       };
}
@sortedData =
   sort { $a->{ meth } cmp $b->{ meth } }
   @Data;
[download]

I hope this is useful.

Cheers,

JohnGG

Hi vsailas,

You can try like this by modifying your array(@Data) to little bit as,

use strict;

my @Data;
while(<DATA>){
    chomp($_);
    my($string,$listref,$count)= split(',' , $_);
    push(@Data,[$string,$listref,$count]);
}
print "METH:$_->[0]\tREF:$_->[1]\tCOUN:$_->[2]\n" for sort {$a->[0] cm
+p $b->[0]} @Data;
[download]

__DATA__
meth2, \@array1, 3
meth3, \@array2, 36
meth1, \@array3, 8
meth5, \@array4, 10
[download]

Punitha

I think the thread title is misleading, the OP is actually trying to sort an array of hashes by one of the hash elements.

Cheers,

JohnGG

$dd{'1'}{'2'}{'3'}="hi";
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my %dd = (
    1 => {
        2 => {
            3 => 'hi'
            }
        }
);
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my $hash_ref1 = $dd{1};
print $hash_ref->{2}{3}, "\n";
# prints h1
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while ( my ( $key, $hash_ref ) = each ( %{ $dd{1} } ) {
    # $key == 2
    # $hash_ref == { 2 => { 3 => 'hi' }  }
}
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