The Perl sort function is useful for alphabetically sorting lists. However, you can’t use it on a list of lists, because once a list starts listing other lists, they cease to be lists and become references instead. By sorting arrays within arrays, it’s possible to gain relational database-like control over data grids.
For example, let’s say I have a list of lists called @biglist. To print all of its unsorted contents, I would write:
for $list_ref ( @biglist ) { print "@$list_ref
";}
To sort @biglist by the first element in each list, I would write:
for $list_ref ( sort { $a->[0] <=> $b->[0] } @biglist ) { print " @$list_ref
";}