use strict; use warnings; use Sort::Fields; use Data::Dumper; my @data = `ls -ls | tail -5`; chomp(@data); print "Field 1 sort:\n", Dumper(fieldsort( ['1n'], @data)); @data = `ls -l | tail -5`; chomp(@data); print "Field 5 sort:\n", Dumper(fieldsort( ['5n'], @data));