#!/usr/bin/perl use warnings; use strict; use feature qw(say); my @strings = qw(xxxxxx.2012-50.yyyyy xxxxxx.2012-51.yyyyy xxxxxx.2012-52.yyyyy xxxxxx.2013-1.yyyyy xxxxxx.2013-2.yyyyy xxxxxx.2013-3.yyyyy xxxxxx.2013-4.yyyyy xxxxxx.2013-10.yyyyy xxxxxx.2013-11.yyyyy ); my %cache; my @sorted = sort { ($cache{$a} //= generate_key($a)) cmp ($cache{$b} //= generate_key($b)) } @strings; say for @sorted; sub generate_key { my $s = (split /\./, shift)[1]; my ($year, $number) = split /-/, $s; return $year . sprintf '-%03d', $number; }