Naturally sort the rows of a 2d array by a column of alphanumeric values

Question

I'm looking for a custom function that will respect the order of the array and sort it by the 'name' key. 'strcasecmp()' function doesn't understand alphanueric values as humans would read it. It thinks 'Apples 12' is a lesser value than 'Apples 5'. I tried this method but can't find a function to compare alphanumeric value:

$array = array(
    0 => array(
        'id' => 2,
        'type' => 'Apples',
        'name' => 'Apples 5',
    ),
    1 => array(
        'id' => 3,
        'type' => 'Grapes',
        'name' => 'Apples',
    ),
    2 => array(
        'id' => 4,
        'type' => 'Apples',
        'name' => 'Apples 4',
    ),
    3 => array(
        'id' => 5,
        'type' => 'Grapes',
        'name' => 'Apples 01',
    ),
    4 => array(
        'id' => 6,
        'type' => 'Apples',
        'name' => 'Apples 1',
    ),
    5 => array(
        'id' => 7,
        'type' => 'Grapes',
        'name' => 'Apples 12',
    )
);

uasort($array, function($a, $b) {
    return strcasecmp($a['name'], $b['name']);
});

foreach($array as $single) {
    echo $single['name'].'<br />';
}

Unexpected result from code above:

Apples
Apples 01
Apples 1
Apples 12
Apples 4
Apples 5

The result I wanted to achieve:

Apples
Apples 01
Apples 1
Apples 4
Apples 5
Apples 12

Ravi Hirani · Accepted Answer · 2019-01-29 06:14:27Z

7

use strnatcasecmp() for natural ordering

edited Jan 29, 2019 at 6:14

Ravi Hirani

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answered May 21, 2012 at 3:41

goat

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Comments

mickmackusa · Accepted Answer · 2025-02-16 13:17:56Z

0

Your sample array does not indicate the need for case-insensitive comparisons, so strnatcmp() will suffice. Demo

uasort(
    $array,
    fn($a, $b) => strnatcmp($a['name'], $b['name'])
);

If you didn't need to preserve the first level keys, array_multisort() could be used to avoid performing iterated function calls. Demo

array_multisort(
    array_column($array, 'name'),
    SORT_ASC,
    SORT_NATURAL,
    $array
);
var_export($array);

answered Feb 16 at 13:17

mickmackusa♦

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