What is sorting with custom comparators in Perl?

Sorting with custom comparators in Perl allows you to define your own sorting logic when sorting lists or arrays. This is particularly useful when you need to sort complex data structures or when you have specific sorting criteria that differ from the default alphabetical or numerical ordering.

To create a custom sort in Perl, you can use the sort function along with a custom comparison block. This block defines the desired order of elements based on various conditions.

my @numbers = (4, 2, 8, 6);
my @sorted_numbers = sort { $a <=> $b } @numbers; # Numeric sort
print join(', ', @sorted_numbers); # Output: 2, 4, 6, 8

my @words = ('apple', 'banana', 'grape', 'orange');
my @sorted_words = sort { length($a) <=> length($b) } @words; # Sort by length of string
print join(', ', @sorted_words); # Output: 'apple', 'grape', 'banana', 'orange'