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phparrayssortingmultidimensional-arrayarray-multisort

Sort rows of a 2d array by a column of values with negative values first, then sort by absolute values descending


I have an array like this:

[
    ['array-5', 0],
    ['array-4', 0],
    ['array-1',-1],
    ['array-3', 2],
    ['array-2', 3]
]

I want to sort this in PHP so that negative numbers are ordered before positive numbers, and if the sign is the same, the magnitude (more negative or more positive) has precedence.

For the example above, the desired output would be:

[
    ['array-1',-1],
    ['array-2', 3],
    ['array-3', 2],
    ['array-4', 0],
    ['array-5', 0]
]

Solution

  • If $data has your input, you can call usort like this:

    usort($data, function ($a, $b) {
        $res = ($b[1] < 0) - ($a[1] < 0);
        $diff = abs($b[1]) - abs($a[1]);
        return $res ? $res : ($diff > 0) - ($diff < 0);
    });
    

    After this has executed, $data will have the desired order.