[Resolved] custom sort function

Matt_Kindig

Hi everyone,

I'm trying to make a custom sort function to sort an array with string keys and integer values, with some of the values repeated. I need it to maintain key/value associations, but sort it in reverse value order.

I've tried all the built-in PHP sort functions, and all of them eliminate the repeated values, so this doesn't work. I tried to write a custom function SortThis() and PHP keeps showing a parse error in the line containing the function declaration (the first line shown here).

function SortThis($myArray) {
    $newArray=array():
    $firstCount=max($myArray);
    for($currCount=$firstCount;    $currCount > 0; --$currCount) {
	foreach($myArray as $key => $value) {
	    if ($value==$currCount) { 
		$tempArray=array($key => $value);
		$newArray=array_merge($newArray, $tempArray);
	    }
	}
    }
    return $newArray;
}

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance for your help.

Matt

bradgrafelman

Line 2 of your code:

    $newArray=array():

Colon used, semicolon expected! 🙂

EDIT: On second thought, maybe that's not your only problem. I'm getting a blank array returned max() returns the highest value, not the highest # of keys, is this what you were wanting instead?...

EDIT2: Waaaaait a tick. You've used all of PHP's built-in functions, huh? Try this.

use arsort() to sort the array in alpha(numerical) order.
use array_reverse() to flip the array, so it's in ascending order (least to greatest)

Done! Two simple PHP functions achieve your desired results.

Matt_Kindig

Ah! A colon instead of a semicolon! I spent two hours trying to figure out what was wrong, and that was it! Now my custom function works correctly.

As for the arsort()/array_reverse() method, the problem I found when I used it before I posted was that for some reason, the arsort() function reduced the array to a single element. I saw in the PHP manual that the sort() functions have wierd behavior when the keys and indexes are of mixed type, so I'm not too surprised by this behavior.

Thanks so much!

bradgrafelman

Sometimes you just need a fresh eye or two in the situation 😉