Question

I am storing array in the following way

$pos[$k] = $total[$k]." / ".$posts_ids[$k]." / ".$time[$k];

I am using following way to extract the value from the pos array.

$a = $b = array();
foreach ($pos as $key => $value){
  list($a[$key], $b[$key], $t[$key]) = explode('/', $value);
  array_multisort($a, SORT_DESC, SORT_NUMERIC, $b ,$t);
}

But i am not able to extract the value of the variable $t as well as not able to sort it without change there position of array.

Answer 1

You haven’t defined t as an array in your code, which shouldn’t be a problem unless you have no values (but, in that case, you would get a warning).

As for multisort, the correct syntax would be

array_multisort($a, $b, $t, SORT_NUMERIC, SORT_DESC);

but it’s not very clear what you want to do, and it might be more convenient to organize differently the parsing of values (e.g. in a multidimensional array instead of multiple arrays, or use a custom sort function).

<?php

        $a = array();
        $b = array();
        $t = array();

        $values = array("5/7/12","1/9/3");

        foreach($values as $key => $value)
        {
                list($a[$key], $b[$key], $t[$key]) = explode('/', $value);
        }
        array_multisort($a, $b, $t, SORT_NUMERIC, SORT_DESC);

        print_r($a);
        print_r($b);
        print_r($t);
?>

as well as not able to sort it without change there position of array.

That is by design. array_multisort sorts on the first array you pass, which is $a. The corresponding elements in the other arrays will be sorting according to the position of the items in $a.

For example if the first element of $a is the smallest, it will be placed last in SORT_DESC. But since the first element of $a is last, the last element of $t will also be put last within $t, whatever its value.

If you want $t to “rule” the sort, you must put it first.

If you want all three arrays to be independently sorted, you must not use array_multisort.