use strict; use warnings; use Benchmark qw(cmpthese); my @a_of_a = map { [($_) x 5] } qw( a list of words to sort but the list needs to be fairly long so we will blab on a bit just because we have to which sorta sucks because it would be more interesting to write code or eat ice-cream ); my @grt; my @ari; cmpthese -2,{ grt => sub { my @grt = map { $a_of_a[unpack"x4N",$_] } sort map { pack "A4N", lc $a_of_a[$_][ 4 ], $_ } 0..$#a_of_a; }, ari => sub { my @ari = do { my @key = map { lc substr $_->[ 4 ], 0, 3 } @a_of_a; my @idx = sort { $key[ $a ] cmp $key[ $b ] } 0 .. $#key; @a_of_a[ @idx ]; }; } }; if (@grt) { for (0..$#a_of_a) { if ( $ari[$_] != $grt[$_] ) { die "$_ is bad\n"; } } } __END__ Rate ari grt ari 3946/s -- -37% grt 6260/s 59% -- Rate ari grt ari 4111/s -- -33% grt 6179/s 50% -- Rate ari grt ari 3989/s -- -38% grt 6393/s 60% -- Rate ari grt ari 4049/s -- -36% grt 6300/s 56% -- Rate ari grt ari 3982/s -- -38% grt 6467/s 62% --