sorting with numbers... but....

darknuke

I know that I can sort numerically using

sort($array, SORT_NUMERIC);

but it only supports numbers in front, but I need to sort strings like (string 3, string 1, string 2) to (string 1, string 2, string 3).

my code: (only the portion that shows that displays data)


if ($handle = opendir($midi_directory)) {
    while (false !== ($dir = readdir($handle))) { 
        if ($dir != "." && $dir != "..") { 
			$id = $id+1;
			$show[$id] = $dir;
        } 
    }
    closedir($handle); 
}


sort($show);
reset($show);

for($i=0; $i<count($show); $i++) { 
print "<a href='script_jukebox.php?dir=$show[$i]#fileplaying'>$show[$i]</a><br>";
}

What can I do? 😕

tasistro

Haven't tried it, but read this...

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.ksort.php

namely the following user post

A real quick way to do a case-insensitive sort of an array keyed by strings:

uksort($myArray, "strnatcasecmp");

Hope that is what you need.

darknuke

nope 🙁 ...

it still sorts (string 8, string 10, string 9) as (string 10, string 8, string 9)

🙁 🙁 anyone else?

HalfaBee

try natsort() it should do what you want.

HalfaBee

Moonglobe

or u could try krsort() if the sorting is backwards........

HalfaBee

The major problem is how you are displaying them.

Do print_r( $show ) before and after the sort and you will see what is happening.

HalfaBee

Moonglobe

oops my bad it's not entirely backwards natsort() is for you i think...

darknuke

Alpha strings are sorted correctly but alphanumeric strings are not.

A 1
A 2
A 100000000
B 1
B 10
C 3

would display

A 100000000
A 1
A 2
B 10
B 1
C 3

🙁

HalfaBee

Try this

<?php
echo "<PRE>";

$a = array(
'A 1',
'C 3',
'A 2',
'B 1',
'A 100000000',
'B 10'
   );

natsort( $a );
print_r( $a );

foreach( $a as $b )
    echo "$b\n";
?>

Outputs
Array
(
[0] => A 1
[2] => A 2
[4] => A 100000000
[3] => B 1
[5] => B 10
[1] => C 3
)
A 1
A 2
A 100000000
B 1
B 10
C 3

Copy and paste the code and try it yourself.
Can you see why the way it is output changes things?

HalfaBee

epimeth

10 is smaller than 2, mate...

these aren't numbers, they're strings... you have to pad your numbers so they all have the same amount of characters in them... 01 02 03 04 etc for numbers reaching at most 99...
001 002 003 ... 010 011 etc for 999
etc
etc

HalfaBee

That is why I sugested he used natsort(), it sorts like a human would.

Have a look at this link. http://naturalordersort.org/

The problem is when it is sorted, the keys go with the string.
So if you loop using a for loop it doesn't look like it works.
Have a look at my example above.
I just cut and pasted the output, no fiddling around.

HalfaBee