Sort an array with special characters in PHP

Question

I have an array that holds the names of languages in spanish:

$lang["ko"] = "coreano"; //korean
$lang["ar"] = "árabe"; //arabic
$lang["es"] = "español"; //spanish
$lang["fr"] = "francés"; //french

I need to order the array and maintain index association, so I use asort() with the SORT_LOCALE_STRING

setlocale(LC_ALL,'es_ES.UTF-8'); //this is at the beginning (config file)
asort($lang,SORT_LOCALE_STRING);
print_r($lang);

The expected output would be in this order:

Array ( [ar] => árabe [ko] => coreano [es] => español [fr] => francés )

However, this is what I'm receiving:

Array ( [ko] => coreano [es] => español [fr] => francés [ar] => árabe )

Am I missing something? Thanks for your feedback! (my server is using PHP Version 5.2.13)

That's why i'm using SORT_LOCALE_STRING. 'á' should come after 'a' and before 'c'. — Andres SK, May 18 '12 at 08:52
Did you check the return value of `setlocale`? Most probably it simply failed. — Jon, May 18 '12 at 08:58
yeap, it's fine. it works with all other locale functions like strftime(). — Andres SK, May 18 '12 at 09:03
@andufo: What does "it's fine" mean? Also, what OS are you on? — Jon, May 18 '12 at 09:12
possible duplicate of [sort array with special characters in php](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2897924/sort-array-with-special-characters-in-php) — Jacob, May 18 '12 at 21:12

score 15 · Accepted Answer · answered May 18 '12 at 08:54

15

Try sorting by translitterated names:

function compareASCII($a, $b) {
    $at = iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $a);
    $bt = iconv('UTF-8', 'ASCII//TRANSLIT', $b);
    return strcmp($at, $bt);
}

uasort($lang, 'compareASCII');

print_r($lang);

answered May 18 '12 at 08:54

lorenzo-s

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15
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4

This may work for this specific case, but it's not a robust general solution; what happens if you want to sort an array containing, for example, strings of Cyrillic or Greek letters? ASCII transliteration isn't particularly reliable. – Will Vousden May 18 '12 at 09:05
@WillVousden You are right. Anyway, for an array containing names of languages it's ok I think. – lorenzo-s May 18 '12 at 09:06
1

@lorenzo-s: Will is right, and the contents of the array don't come into it (what if it were names of languages *in Greek*?). This solution may be creative, but it's fundamentally flawed on a technical level. It would be massively better to just troubleshoot the problem, since the original code works for other people. – Jon May 18 '12 at 09:09
@lorenzo-s: It probably is OK, but then if it's later decided that the names of the languages should be in the languages themselves (and respective alphabets), e.g. Korean: 한국의, then there might be a problem :) – Will Vousden May 18 '12 at 09:11
@WillVousden good point. In fact that same code should work for chinese and hebrew characters as well. – Andres SK May 18 '12 at 09:11

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered May 18 '12 at 08:55

3

You defined your locale incorrectly in setlocale().

Change:

setlocale(LC_ALL,'es_ES.UTF-8');

To:

setlocale(LC_ALL,'es_ES');

Output:

Array ( [ar] => árabe [ko] => coreano [es] => español [fr] => francés )

answered May 18 '12 at 08:55

George Reith

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I did try that too, but it returns the same response: Array ( [ko] => coreano [es] => español [fr] => francés [ar] => árabe ) – Andres SK May 18 '12 at 08:58
2

That locale is 100% correct if the file is encoded in UTF-8. In any case, locale suffix and file encoding should match. – Jon May 18 '12 at 08:58
@andufo Try running it at [phptester.net](http://phptester.net/index.php?lang=en) it works fine for me there. If that's the case you should see Jon's comment and check how your file is encoded. – George Reith May 18 '12 at 09:02
@GeorgeReith you're right. Just tested it and it worked fine in phptester.net -- any ideas on why it isn't working on my server? The file is UTF-8 encoded. – Andres SK May 18 '12 at 09:09
@andufo Not sure, try using `utf8_encode()` on the strings as you put them into the array. – George Reith May 18 '12 at 09:14
@andufo Try `setlocale(LC_ALL,'es_ES.ISO-8859-1');` they use `ISO-8859-1` encoding at phptester.net. – George Reith May 18 '12 at 09:19
didn't work neither, but i just tested the code on my production server (in a test file) and it worked perfectly just by setting the correct locale. thanks for the help! – Andres SK May 18 '12 at 09:23
1

@andufo Awesome, I suggest you run `echo mb_internal_encoding();` on your testing server to see what your file is actually encoded as. You can then set it correctly such as `mb_internal_encoding("UTF-8");`, your `.htaccess` if your on apache may be altering the encoding your pages are served in. – George Reith May 18 '12 at 10:26

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered May 18 '12 at 09:15

1

The documentation for setlocale mentions that

Different systems have different naming schemes for locales.

It's possible that your system does not recognize the locale as es_ES. If you are on Windows, try esp_ESP instead.

answered May 18 '12 at 09:15

Jon

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score 0 · Answer 4 · answered May 18 '12 at 08:59

0

Try this

setlocale(LC_COLLATE, 'nl_BE.utf8');
$array = array('coreano','árabe','español','francés');
usort($array, 'strcoll'); 
print_r($array);

answered May 18 '12 at 08:59

vicky

695
5
15

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Dec 20 '19 at 18:24

This is a non problem!

Your initial solution works exactly as expected, Your problem is the setlocale function that is failing to set the locale and by consequence the asort($array, SORT_LOCALE_STRING) fails to sort as you expect it

You can try your own code at phptester.net that does accept setlocale():

$lang["ko"] = "coreano"; //korean
$lang["ar"] = "árabe"; //arabic
$lang["es"] = "español"; //spanish
$lang["fr"] = "francés"; //french

asort($lang,SORT_LOCALE_STRING);
echo "<pre>";
print_r($lang);
echo "</pre>";

echo "<pre>";
/*this should return es_ES; 
if returns false it has failed and asort wont return expected order
*/
var_dump(setlocale(LC_ALL,'es_ES')); 
echo "</pre>";

asort($lang,SORT_LOCALE_STRING);
echo "<pre>";
print_r($lang);

Sort an array with special characters in PHP

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