Strange chronological order array sorting problem.

[Gazdaman]

Ok, I have several directory names all are in the format dd-mm-yyyy-name

I substr()'d the date off, and removed the hyphens. So the format was ddmmyyyy
I placed the substring and full dir name in an array, the substring integers were the keys for their corresponding directories.

I then did a ksort($array)

And it comes back sorted, but it only takes account of the first two numbers of the integer.

Meaning I get them back in the right order if only going by the days. i.e

01-01-05
02-01-04
13-10-06

I looked into using strtotime() but it seemed to not be entirely suited here, considering I have an almost complete date, and it seems to want input more in the way of "next tuesday" than an actual date.

Thank you.

Gaz

[HuggieBear]

OK, you were on the right track with strtotime();

Here's some sample code I just knocked up, you could even put it into a function if you wanted.

[code]<?php

// Test data (unordered)
$folders = array('01-01-1970-first', '05-01-1970-second', '10-06-2000-fifth', '05-03-1985-third', '19-12-1993-fourth');

// Loop through each folder
foreach ($folders as $name){
  preg_match('/^(\d{2})-(\d{2})-(\d{4})/', $name, $segments); // match each segment of the date
  $gnu_date_format = $segments[3].$segments[2].$segments[1]; // put date in gnu format (yyyymmdd) for passing to strtotime()
  $timestamp = strtotime($gnu_date_format); // change the date format to a unix timestamp
  $newlist[$timestamp] = $name; // new array keyed on timestamp
}

// Sort the new list
ksort($newlist);

// Echo the folder names
foreach ($newlist as $folder){
  echo "$folder<br>\n";
}
?>[/code]

Regards
Huggie

[Gazdaman]

Thanks alot! That did the job perfectly.

If you don't mind baring with me a second I don't entirely understand the script.

preg_match('/^(\d{2})-(\d{2})-(\d{4})/', $name, $segments);

I assume returns 3 thins, I assume the 3 sections of date delimited by the hypens... and puts them into the array $segments[]
$gnu_date_format just moves them around. The rest I understand.

Just a little point in the right direction of how that regex works would be much appreciated.

(It works perfectly too btw).

Thank you so much!

Gaz

[HuggieBear]

ok, here it is broken down.  I've only included the first half as once you have that the rest is self explanatory

[table]
[tr][td][color=red]/[/color][/td][td]Start the pattern sequence[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][color=red]^[/color][/td][td]Match the start of the line[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][color=red](\d{2})[/color][/td][td]Match 2 digits, enclosing inside the parenthesis says we want to capture that specific data into a variable[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][color=red]-[/color][/td][td]Match a hyphen[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][color=red](\d{2})[/color][/td][td]Match another 2 digits, again capturing them into a separate variable[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][color=red]-[/color][/td][td]Match a hyphen[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][color=red](\d{4})[/color][/td][td]Match the last 4 digits, again, put them into a separate variable[/td][/tr]
[tr][td][color=red]/[/color][/td][td]End the pattern matching sequence[/td][/tr]
[/table]

Regards
Huggie

[Gazdaman]

What a guy, thank you.

Gaz