Sorting Arrays

[loll]

Hi,

I am having a small problem with array.

I have an array which may look like this: array(6,"*","-",7);

when I sort these it looks like * - 6 7

What I am trying to do is sort it so that it sorts the - as the first item

So I am trying to end up with an array that looks like this: - 6 7 (with the and - swapped around)

none of the sort functions seem to be able to do this.

Perhaps the usort would but I am not sure I quite understand how I would use that function to create my own order for the array.

Any Help would be greatly appreciated.

[bradgrafelman]

I don't understand your method for sorting the array... do you always want the hyphen, if found, to appear as the first array element? If so, something like this might work:

function weirdSort($array) {
    sort($array);
    if(($key = array_search('-', $array))) {
		unset($array[$key]);
		array_unshift($array, '-');
	}
	return $array;
}

$test = array(6,"*","-",7);
$test = weirdSort($test);
print_r($test); /* Outputs:
Array
(
    [0] => -
    [1] => *
    [2] => 6
    [3] => 7
)
*/

[NogDog]

You could use usort like this:

function mySort($a, $b)
{
   $a = ($a === '-') ? -2 : (($a === '*') ? -1 : $a);
   $b = ($b === '-') ? -2 : (($b === '*') ? -1 : $b);
   return($a - $b);
}
usort($array, 'mySort');