Is there a native multi-dimensional, multi-type sort in PHP?

Question

I'm struggling with sorting a multi-dimensional, multi-type array in PHP.

Usually I just use sort and rsort and ksort etc.

This situation doesn't seem to require anything much more complex, but array_multisort doesn't appear to be working (at least not how I'm using it).

My multi-dimensional, multi-type array looks like this:

[
    'Welsh_Harmony' => [
        'Bread_Dip',
        'Cloud_Patterns',
        'Legendary_Sword',
        'Legumes_In_The_Garden',
        'Notice::Balloons',
        'Notice::Corvid',
        'Titanic',
        'novemberMonth',
        'Elephant_Graveyard'
    ],

    'Oak' => [
        'Keyboard'
    ]
]

and array_multisort gives me this (which is only half right):

[
    'Oak' => [
        'Keyboard'
    ],

    'Welsh_Harmony' => [
        'Bread_Dip',
        'Cloud_Patterns',
        'Legendary_Sword',
        'Legumes_In_The_Garden',
        'Notice::Balloons',
        'Notice::Corvid',
        'Titanic',
        'novemberMonth',
        'Elephant_Graveyard'
    ]
]

Whereas the result I'm trying to produce (note the position of 'Elephant_Graveyard') is:

[
    'Oak' => [
        'Keyboard'
    ],

    'Welsh_Harmony' => [
        'Bread_Dip',
        'Cloud_Patterns',
        'Elephant_Graveyard',
        'Legendary_Sword',
        'Legumes_In_The_Garden',
        'Notice::Balloons',
        'Notice::Corvid',
        'Titanic',
        'novemberMonth'
    ]
]

I have tried using the flag SORT_STRING and SORT_ASC to prompt array_multisort to alphabetically re-order and re-index the second level arrays, but that doesn't seem to work either.

I'm optimistic that there must be a way to execute this kind of multi-dimensional, multi-type sort without writing a custom, recursive function.

Answer 1

array_multisort() can be used to sort several arrays at once, or a multi-dimensional array by one or more dimensions.

This is basically how you sort different dimensions of your array:

$ar = array(
   array("10", 11, 100, 100, "a"),
   array(   1,  2, "2",   3,   1)
  );
array_multisort($ar[0], SORT_ASC, SORT_STRING,
            $ar[1], SORT_NUMERIC, SORT_DESC);

Multi sort accepts variadic params. Read more here, please read scroll down and read the comments.

---

Or you can loop through your array's arrays and sort them one by one.

foreach ($matrix as &$row) { sort($row); } 

However, I think multi-sort would perform much better.