I rewrote my custom sort function, but I am not sure I did it the best way possible. A few sets of fresh eyeballs might see something obvious where I may have overcomplicated the function. The section I rewrote is in the the first if in the first else. If you make it as far as the elsif for sorting by name, I could use some pointers of how to account for name suffixes like Jr. or III.

Thank you for looking.

sub my_sort {
  my ($c,$d,$type) = @_;
  $c = lc($c);
  $d = lc($d);

  # When sorting lists of files, I want the index file to always come 
+first.
  if ($c =~ /^index\./) {
    return -1;
  }
  elsif ($d =~ /^index\./) {
    return 1;
  }
  else {
    if (!$type || $type =~ /article/) {
      # This is the default sorting method.
      # Written with the help of kent/n in #perl on freenode.
      
      for ($c, $d) {
        s/<.+?>//g; # Strip out any html tags.
        s/\s*\b(A|a|An|an|The|the)(_|\s)//xi; # Strip off leading arti
+cles (in English).
        decode_entities($_);
      }
      if ( $c =~/^((\d|,|\.)+)(.*)$/ && $d =~ /^((\d|,|\.)+)(.*)$/) {
        # Get the leading number.
        (my $e = $c) =~ s/^((\d|,|\.)+)(.*)$/$1/;
        (my $f = $d) =~ s/^((\d|,|\.)+)(.*)$/$1/;

        # Take any commas out of the number.
        s/,//g for ($e,$f);

        # Get the remaining parts of the string.
        (my $g = $c) =~ s/^((\d|,|\.)+)(.*)$/$3/;
        (my $h = $d) =~ s/^((\d|,|\.)+)(.*)$/$3/;

        # First compare the numbers, then compare the remaining parts 
+of the string.
        $e <=> $f || $g cmp $h
      }
      else {
        $c cmp $d;
      }
    }
    elsif ($type =~ /name/) {
      # When I sort by name I prefer lastname firstname.
      # I have not yet written this to account for Sr., Jr., or Roman 
+numerals after the last name.
      
      for ($c,$d) {
        s/\|.+$//;
        $_ = join(' ', (reverse split(/(?:_|\s)(?=[^_\s]+$)/, $_,2))) 
+if $_ !~ /^_/;
        s/^_//;
        s/^(A|a|An|an|The|the)(_|\s)//;
      }
      return $c cmp $d;
    }
    else {
      die(qq($type is not valid in the sort.));
    }
  }
}
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