print for
    map $_->[1],
    sort { $b->[0] <=> $a->[0] }
    map [ /\(millisec\):(\d+)/, $_ ],
    @data;
[download]

If the number of interest is always at the end of the lines then a simple /(\d+)$/ would do.
A combination of rindex and substr instead of the regex would probably be even faster.

See also this reference work for more pointers.

As always, just give pointers in the right direction.

Ok, here are your pointers :)

• Use a regex or split to extract the column of interest
• Use the Schwartzian Transform to do the actual sorting. The ST avoids having to do the (relatively expensive) extraction procedure anew for each pairwise comparison ($a <=> $b).

There are several good references in the Tutorials section of the Monestary on sorting. I would look in the subsection Getting Deeper Into Perl and the sub-subsection List Processing, Filtering, and Sorting. In particular you should look at transformational sorts; the Schwartzian Sort is, I think, one of the more popular that should meet your needs.

I would suggest, in particular, any one of three of the tutorials:

A brief tutorial on Perl's native sorting facilities by BrowserUK,

Resorting to Sorting by japhy, or

Complex sorting by vroom

The first is a good place to start, but the other two are really good, to, IMHO.

Good luck.

UPDATE: One thing I should've said (I didn't think about this until I got home last night) is that when you write your sort subroutine (which is what gives the transformation sorting...like the Schartzian Transformation sort, etc., their power...you'll need to parse each line of the input file to isolate the time data that you want to sort on. This will also mean that you'd need to read (slurp) the entire file into an array since the types of sorting mentioned in the references I posed do so in memory. There are some CPAN modules (e.g., Sort::Array) that I believe can sort files without having to slurp the entire file into memory...but I don't have any experience with them so I'm not sure if they can actually do that...maybe other Monks could guide you on that). Again, good luck.

It's probably referenced somewhere within the pointers already given, but just in case... here is another classical one worthwhile reading: A Fresh Look at Efficient Perl Sorting.

I just checked out that reference it is, indeed, an excellent reference. I did not know about it and found it a good reference to put my tool back of "places to look" for info on sorting. Thanks, almut.

ack Albuquerque, NM

If you're just looking for a quick and dirty way to do this, you can do it in your shell.

sort -rnt: -k9

Sort reverse, numeric, field separator colon, field 9.

You may find these helpful:

• Sort by specific column
• schwartzian transform and sorting on two columns
• How do I sort a file with IP Addresses and another text column?
• How do I sort on more than one column?

Hi! I don't have extensive experience with sorting methods, but in this case I think a simple approach would work, like that:

use strict;
use warnings;

my $Line;           # one input line
my @SortedData;     # resulting sorted data set

# data set example
my @Data    =   (
                    '100644:MWTP_CAT:12002: SERVER:pid=14520:Execution
+ time:TPR015-10:(millisec):53',
                    '100644:MWTP_CAT:12002: SERVER:pid=15866:Execution
+ time:TPR015-10:(millisec):10',
                    '100644:MWTP_CAT:12002: SERVER:pid=15866:Execution
+ time:TPR015-10:(millisec):33',
                    '100644:MWTP_CAT:12002: SERVER:pid=16565:Execution
+ time:TPR007-12:(millisec):437',
                    '100644:MWTP_CAT:12002: SERVER:pid=16565:Execution
+ time:TPR007-12:(millisec):470',
                    '100644:MWTP_CAT:12002: SERVER:pid=16048:Execution
+ time:TPR009-30:(millisec):24',
                    '100644:MWTP_CAT:12002: SERVER:pid=15866:Execution
+ time:TPR012-01E:(millisec):63',
                    '100644:MWTP_CAT:12002: SERVER:pid=10427:Execution
+ time:ISCST044:(millisec):0',
                    '100644:MWTP_CAT:12002: SERVER:pid=15866:Execution
+ time:TPR012-01E:(millisec):85',
                    '100644:MWTP_CAT:12002: SERVER:pid=10428:Execution
+ time:01201E:(millisec):3',
                );

# create sorted data set
@SortedData = reverse sort { (split (/:/, $a))[-1] <=> (split (/:/, $b
+))[-1] } @Data;

### DEBUG: print input and output sets ###
print "Data Set is:\n", join ("\n", @Data), "\n";
print "Sorted Data is:\n", join ("\n", @SortedData), "\n";
[download]

You can get rid of the reverse operation just inverting the order of the comparison operands. In other words, instead of reverse sort { $a <=> $b } @data use sort { $b <=> $a } @data.

In OP case:

@SortedData = sort { (split (/:/, $b))[-1] <=> (split (/:/, $a))[-1] }
+ @Data;
[download]

Using reverse also makes the sort operation unstable (entries with equal sorting keys do not keep their relative positions after the sort operation).

I see that switching the opereands is better but I don't catch what you mean with "equal sorting keys do not keep their relative positions after the sort operation"... probably I miss something. Could you explain deeply that point? Thanks.