Page 163 - Beginning PHP 5.3

Chapter 6: Arrays
print_r ( $authors );
echo “ < br/ > ”;

// Displays “Array ( [0] = > A Tale of Two Cities [1] = > The Trial [2] = > East
of Eden [3] = > Of Mice and Men [4] = > The Grapes of Wrath [5] = > The Hobbit )”
print_r ( $titles );
echo “ < br/ > ”;

// Displays “Array ( [0] = > 1859 [1] = > 1925 [2] = > 1952 [3] = > 1937 [4] = >
1939 [5] = > 1937 )”
print_r ( $pubYears );

These arrays contain information on three books by Steinbeck. You can see that array_multisort()
has sorted all the arrays by author in ascending order as before. However, it has also sorted the three
Steinbeck books — East of Eden , Of Mice and Men , and The Grapes of Wrath — into ascending order.

You can also use array_multisort() to sort multidimensional arrays. This works in much the same
way as for multiple arrays, except that you only pass in one array. The function then sorts the array by
the first element of each nested array, then by the second element of each nested array, and so on. The
order of the elements in the nested array is untouched.

The following code illustrates how array_multisort() sorts a two - dimensional array. Figure 6-6
shows the output from the script.

< !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN”
“http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd” >
< html xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml” xml:lang=”en” lang=”en” >
< head >
< title > Using array_multisort() on a Two-Dimensional Array < /title >
< link rel=”stylesheet” type=”text/css” href=”common.css” / >
< /head >
< body >
< h1 > Using array_multisort() on a Two-Dimensional Array < /h1 >

< ?php
$myBooks = array(
array(
“title” = > “The Grapes of Wrath”,
“author” = > “John Steinbeck”,
“pubYear” = > 1939
),
array(
“title” = > “Travels With Charley”,
“author” = > “John Steinbeck”,
“pubYear” = > 1962
),
array(
“title” = > “The Trial”,
“author” = > “Franz Kafka”,
“pubYear” = > 1925
),

125

c06.indd 125 9/21/09 9:00:18 AM
c06.indd 125
9/21/09 9:00:18 AM