Spaceship Operator - I canna git it t' worrrk, cap'n!

Right here in front of me is _Learning Perl_. On
p. 170 is the following code to get an array of
numbers sorted numerically (1,2,3,11,111,21,30, etc
instead of 1,11,111,2,21,3,30, etc):

  @rightlist = sort { $a <=> $b } @wronglist;

And right here on my Ultra monitor screen I have
the following code to do the same thing:

#!/apps/LWperl/bin/perl -w[1]
while (<>){     # reads the file of numbers
@wordlist = $_;
@sortwordlist = sort { $a <=> $b } @wordlist;
print @sortwordlist; 
}

The file being read in is a list of numbers with 
revision letters or a dash like so:

  5335 -
  5336 A
  5337 B
  5338 -

There's 2354 numbers. I just want them sorted in
numeric order. What am I doing wrong? Is it the 
revision letters? I tried 

  @sortwordlist = sort { $a cmp $b } @wordlist;

Also no luck. Suggestions?

Terry Fowler
Boeing
[1] No matter how I try I can't get the SysAdmin to
    install perl in /usr/bin/perl. Go figure.

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