@Carl Love THANK YOU.  It WILL make a difference, I'm calling this function around about 2 million times.  :)

@Carl Love 

This has been working fantastically for me, but recently I've been asking my computer to do too much and need this to run faster.  Could you help me make the small changes at the expense of the flexibility?  The length will always be 8 (WLOG, I can modify it in the case when I change it).  Thank you tremendously. 

@Carl Love 

Thank you so much, this works fantastically.  

Sorry, my attempt was in a picture which doesn't show up.  

sort(L, (x, y) -> ' if (i := 1; for i from 1 to 20 while x[i] = y[i], do i := i +1 end do; evalb(y[i] < x[i])), evalb(x[i] < y[i]')))