#6: Sorting Multidimensional Arrays
One perennial programming task is to sort complicated arrays. For example, let's say that you have this array:
$items = array( array("name" => "Mojo Nixon", "price" => 19.96, "quantity" => 2), array("name" => "ABBA", "price" => 14.99, "quantity" => 1), array("name" => "Iced Earth", "price" => 12.96, "quantity" => 4), );
Your goal is to sort this by the name
key in each subarray. PHP, like many other scripting languages, has a sort function named usort()
that sorts by a user-defined comparison function. In other words, you can sort an array by any criteria you like, and you don't need to fuss with the mechanics of sorting algorithms. The name-based sorting script with usort()
boils down to this:
function name_cmp($a, ...
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