note zeidrik If You insist on "sort" here is my way to do it:<BR> for the database as <code> 1 2 3 |10 a b c |20 e f g |100 x n f |1 </code> the code <code> #!/usr/bin/perl -w use strict; my %H; open(R,"database"); map {/\|(\d+)/; $H{$1}=$_ if $1}<R>; close(R); foreach (sort {$a<=>$b} keys %H){print $H{$_}} </code> does exactly: <code> x n f |1 1 2 3 |10 a b c |20 e f g |100 </code> Enjoy... 83509 83509