How to sort array by columns maintaining the rows? (for C style arrays)

[Anonymous Monk]

I want to be able to sort the "double-dimension" array by one of the colums... eg. alphabeticaly by comparing items in column 2 of the array... below some sample data:

$foo[0][0] = "zenia";       $foo[0][1] = "markownikowa"; $foo[0][2] = 
+"10";
$foo[1][0] = "marek";       $foo[1][1] = "butalski";     $foo[1][2] = 
+"20";
$foo[2][0] = "teresa";      $foo[2][1] = "parufkowa";    $foo[2][2] = 
+"90";
$foo[3][0] = "bogumila";    $foo[3][1] = "pierdowa";     $foo[3][2] = 
+"40";
$foo[4][0] = "genowefa";    $foo[4][1] = "tempawa";      $foo[4][2] = 
+"50";

First -- let's sort these by the [][1] column... the result should be:

marek           brutalski       20
zenia           markownikowa    10
teresa          parufkowa       90
bogumila        pierdawa        40
genowefa        tempawa         50

sorting by the [][2] column should give us:

zenia           markownikowa    10
marek           brutalski       20
bogumila        pierdawa        40
genowefa        tempawa         50
teresa          parufkowa       90

The manual covers only case of hashes and uses subroutine for comparing items. But how to adopt that for comparing such an array? Thanx in advance... Joustin

Originally posted as a Categorized Question.