#! perl use strict; my %data; while( my $line = ) { chomp $line; my $position = index( $line, ':', ); my $key = substr( $line, 0, $position ); my $value = substr( $line, $position + 1 ); $data{ $key } = $value; } my @unsorted_keys = keys %data; my @sorted_keys = sort @unsorted_keys; for( my $index = 0; $index <= ( scalar( @sorted_keys ) - 1 ); $index++ ) { my $key = $sorted_keys[ $index ]; my $value = $data{ $key }; print "$key : $value\n"; } __DATA__ a:1 b:2 c:3 d:4 e:5