Robbie Hatley’s Solutions, in Perl, for The Weekly Challenge #360 (“Text Justifier” and “Word Sorter”)

For those not familiar with "The Weekly Challenge", it is a weekly programming puzzle with two parts, with a new pair of tasks each Monday. You can find it here: The Weekly Challenge

The Weekly Challenge for the week of 2026-02-09 through 2026-02-15 is #360. The tasks for challenge #360 are as follows:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Task 360-1: Text Justifier
Submitted by: Mohammad Sajid Anwar
You are given a string and a width. Write a script to return the
string that centers the text within that width using asterisks *
as padding.

(
   # Example #1 input:
   ["Hi", 5],
   # Expected output: "*Hi**"

   # Example #2 input:
   ["Code", 10],
   # Expected output: "***Code***"

   # Example #3 input:
   ["Hello", 9],
   # Expected output: "**Hello**"

   # Example #4 input:
   ["Perl", 4],
   # Expected output: "Perl"

   # Example #5 input:
   ["A", 7],
   # Expected output: "***A***"

   # Example #6 input:
   ["", 5]
   # Expected output: "*****"
);

To solve this, just compute the left and right pad widths, then do:

   $out = '*'x$lpw . $str . '*'x$rpw

Robbie Hatley's Perl Solution to The Weekly Challenge 360-1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Task 360-2: Word Sorter
Submitted by: Mohammad Sajid Anwar
You are given a sentence. Write a script to order words in the
given sentence alphabetically but keeps the words themselves
unchanged.

# Example #1 input:
"The quick brown fox",
# Expected output: "brown fox quick The"

# Example #2 input:
"Hello    World!   How   are you?",
# Expected output: "are Hello How World! you?"

# Example #3 input:
"Hello",
# Expected output: "Hello"

# Example #4 input:
"Hello, World! How are you?",
# Expected output: "are Hello, How World! you?"

# Example #5 input:
"I have 2 apples and 3 bananas!"
# Expected output: "2 3 and apples bananas! have I"

To solve this problem, I'll split the sentence on /\s+/ to form a list of "words", case-insensitively sort those words with "sort {fc $a cmp fc $b}", paste with "join ' ',", and return result.

Robbie Hatley's Perl Solution to The Weekly Challenge 360-2

That's it for challenge 360; see you on challenge 361!