[thelist] Sorting 2D array in PHP

[Brooking, John]

I'm finally taking the plunge and learning PHP. I'm currently trying to figure out the easiest way to sort a database-type 2D array, such as:

   $fruit = array( array( "name" => "pear"  
                        , "color" => "green" 
                        , "texture" => "squishy" 
                        )
                 , array( "name" => "apple" 
                        , "color" => "red"   
                        , "texture" => "crunchy" 
                        ), 
                 , array( "name" => "banana"
                        , "color" => "yellow"   
                        , "texture" => "firm" 
                        ),
                 );
                 
I've been looking at the PHP array functions, and the closest I find is array_multisort, but that seems to require that you transpose your arrow to be sets of columns rather than sets of rows, and that seems very counter-intuitive and inconvenient. What I want is something where I can pass the $fruit array, and say sort each sub-array by a list of their keys, something like: mySort( $fruit, array( "name", "-color" )). (I'm proposing that a leading "-" would mean descending.) I would want this to re-order the outer array integer keys so that $fruit[0] is the apple array, $fruit[1] is the banana array, and $fruit[2] is the pear array.

Barring that, if I were in Perl, I would just call the Perl sort function and pass my own comparison function pointer. Does PHP have such a mechanism? I haven't found it, if it does.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

- John

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