Sorting a variety of datatypes

[aaron_karp]

What do you guys use to sort arrays of varying datatypes? I.e. I have a string of numbers formatted with commas and decimals:

54,234.23
but also values like:
39.02

So natcasesort doesn't work, and neither just regular sort.

I'd like the function to also deal well with regular ints, strings, etc.

Any ideas?

[devinemke]

what about something like this:

$array = array('54,234.23', '39.02', '105,208', 88.8);

foreach ($array as $key => $value)
{
	$value = str_replace(',', '', $value);
	settype($value, 'float');
	$array[$key] = $value;
}

sort($array);
print_r($array);

[aaron_karp]

Well, that looks like it would work. I suppose afterwards I can just plug the commas back in. Thanks.

[devinemke]

Originally posted by aaron_karp
Well, that looks like it would work. I suppose afterwards I can just plug the commas back in. Thanks.

...or just stick the old format versions in as the array keys:

$array = array('54,234.23', '39.02', '105,208', 88.8);

foreach ($array as $key => $value)
{
	$new_value = str_replace(',', '', $value);
	settype($new_value, 'float');
	$new_array[$value] = $new_value;
}

asort($new_array);
print_r($new_array);

[aaron_karp]

neat 🙂