Sorting Array in Perl - arrays

Question

I thought I could do it the way that has been stated below. However when I sort it this way the output is the values in hexadecimal values, instead of the string pointing to "item" in the array #menu. What I want to achieve is to sort it by "item-name"
my #menu = (
{ item => "Blazer", price => 100, color => "Brown" },
{ item => "Jeans", price => 50, color => "Blue" },
{ item => "Shawl", price => 30, color => "Red" },
{ item => "Suit", price => 40, color => "Black" },
{ item => "Top", price => 25, color => "White" },
);
my #test = sort {item } #menu;
foreach (#test){
print $_;
}

Answer 1

Your print $_ prints the string value of each hash reference, so you will get something like HASH(0x1d33524). You need to print the fields of each hash that you're interested in.
Also, you need a proper comparison expression inside the sort block. Just giving the name of a hash key won't do anything useful.
use strict;
use warnings;
my #menu = (
{ item => 'Blazer', price => 100, color => 'Brown' },
{ item => 'Jeans', price => 50, color => 'Blue' },
{ item => 'Shawl', price => 30, color => 'Red' },
{ item => 'Suit', price => 40, color => 'Black' },
{ item => 'Top', price => 25, color => 'White' },
);
my #test = sort { $a->{item} cmp $b->{item} } #menu;
for ( #test ) {
print "#{$_}{qw/ item price color /}\n";
}
output
Blazer 100 Brown
Jeans 50 Blue
Shawl 30 Red
Suit 40 Black
Top 25 White
Update
If all you want is a sorted list of the item field values then you can write this more simply
use strict;
use warnings;
my #menu = (
{ item => 'Blazer', price => 100, color => 'Brown' },
{ item => 'Jeans', price => 50, color => 'Blue' },
{ item => 'Shawl', price => 30, color => 'Red' },
{ item => 'Suit', price => 40, color => 'Black' },
{ item => 'Top', price => 25, color => 'White' },
);
my #test = sort map { $_->{item} } #menu;
print "$_\n" for #test;
output
Blazer
Jeans
Shawl
Suit
Top

Answer 2

The contents of the curlies needs to be an expression that returns the whether the elements in $a should appear before the element in $b in the final result.
The elements, in this case, are references to hashes. You want to compare the item element of those hashes, so
sort { $a->{item} cmp $b->{item} }

Answer 3

The first argument to sort BLOCK LIST is the block that compares two members of the list, not the way how to extract the things to compare. See sort.
my #test = sort { $a->{item} cmp $b->{item} } #menu;
Sort::Key allows you to specify "what to sort by", not "how to compare elements".
use Sort::Key qw{ keysort };
# ...
my #test = keysort { $_->{item} } #menu;
In your code without strict, the string "item" is used to compare the elements, which doesn't really change the order in any way. What you see in the output is the representation of the members of the array, i.e. hash references. If you want to see the items only, use
for (#test) {
print $_->{item}, "\n";
}

Answer 4

See also List::UtilsBy:
use List::UtilsBy 'sort_by';
my #test = sort_by { $_->{item} } #menu;