Question

I have an array of cronjobs on my server, which I need to sort by the date they fire, the starting array is:

Array ( 
[0] => 00 08 24 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command 
[1] => 00 09 24 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command
[2] => 00 08 18 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command
[3] => 00 11 18 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command
)

I want this list represented in a table on my website, but sorted by month, day of month, hour, minute.

The desired output is:

Array(
[0] => 00 08 18 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command
[1] => 00 11 18 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command
[2] => 00 08 24 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command
[3] => 00 09 24 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command

Can anyone point me in the direction I need to go in order to achieve this?

Thanks for your time.

Answer 1

How about this?

$a = array(
  '00 08 24 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command',
  '00 09 24 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command',
  '00 08 18 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command',
  '00 11 18 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command',
);

usort($a, function($f, $s) {
   $fx = implode('', array_reverse(preg_split('/\D+/', $f)));
   $sx = implode('', array_reverse(preg_split('/\D+/', $s)));
   return strcmp($fx, $sx);
});

var_dump($a);
/*
0 => string '00 08 18 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command' (length=48)
1 => string '00 11 18 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command' (length=48)
2 => string '00 08 24 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command' (length=48)
3 => string '00 09 24 10 * 2012 curl --user user:pass command' (length=48)
 */

What I’ve done here is basically extracting all the numeric parts from all the strings in question, then reversing them into a numeric string, then comparing these strings.

This can be modified in two ways: first, hardening the regex so it won’t match numbers in command itself:

   $fx = implode('', array_reverse(
     preg_split('/(?<=\d{4}).+$|\D+/', $f)));

… and second, using a memoizing function:

function getSortCriteria($line) {
  static $criterias = array();
  if (! isset($criterias[$line])) {
    $numbers = preg_split('/\D+/', substr($line, 0, 18));
    $criterias[$line] = implode('', array_reverse($numbers));
  }
  return $criterias[$line];
}

usort($a, function($f, $s) { 
  return strcmp(getSortCriteria($f), getSortCriteria($s)); 
});

var_dump($a);    

Here I removed the rest of the string with substring; it’s more efficient, I think. Still, showing how this can be done with regex might be useful as well. ))