Since your example was sketchy, I'll have to give you only an example:

my @aoh = (
  { first => 'fred', last => 'flintstone', age => 30 },
  { first => 'wilma', last => 'flintstone', age => 26 },
  { first => 'pebbles', last => 'flintstone', age => 3 },
  { first => 'barney', last => 'rubble', age => 28 },
  { first => 'betty', last => 'rubble', age => 24 },
  { first => 'bammbamm', last => 'rubble', age => 2 },
  { first => 'mr.', last => 'slate', age => 35 },
);
# The boss comes first!
my %lastname_sortorder = qw(
  flintstone 2
  rubble 3
  slate 1
);
my @sorted = sort {
  $lastname_sortorder{$a->{last}} <=> $lastname_sortorder{$b->{last}} 
+or # primary is lastname  sort order
  $a->{age} <=> $b->{age} # secondary is age
} @aoh;
[download]

The key here is to create an "ordering table" which is used for the comparison, then look up your non-linear sort key in this ordering table, and sort on that instead.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker

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