Re: How do I sort a hash by its values?

[George_Sherston]

Warning: I'm the person who asked the question!

How I'd do it is

my %hash = (
   foo => 2,
   bar => 1,
   baz => 3,
   bun => 2,
);

my @array = sort {$hash{$a} <=> $hash{$b}} keys %hash;

Of course, this array only has the hash keys in it, albeit correctly sorted. If you want a data structure with both keys *and* values from %hash then you have to choose a data structure that meets your needs. A straight hash is no good, because you have duplicate values, so you'll lose some key / value pairs when you reverse them. An array of hashes is one choice:

my @array_of_hashes;
push @array_of_hashes, {key => $_, value => $hash{$_}} for @sorted;

And to see what that looks like,

use Data::Dumper;
print Dumper(\@array_of_hashes);

Gets you

$VAR1 = [
          {
            'value' => 1,
            'key' => 'bar'
          },
          {
            'value' => 2,
            'key' => 'bun'
          },
          {
            'value' => 2,
            'key' => 'foo'
          },
          {
            'value' => 3,
            'key' => 'baz'
          }
        ];

... but I'm interested to see what other monks come up with: it was my slight unease with this solution that prompted me to post this question.