If you sort (8, 9, 10, 11, 12), how do you want them to be output? "In the order you've just listed, Graham", you'll probably say. But if they're strings and you sort them, then you'll get the order 10, 11, 12, 8, 9 output if you just use a default sort, because the character "1" comes before the character "8" in the alphabet.

Using PHP, you could write your own sort routine (using usort) ... but there's a better way - a function called "natsort". Remember the PHP rule of thumb - if you think surely someone's done that before then often the solution will be there's a function to do that.

Here's an example of the output from an illustrative program:

Original
0 .. 12 Drummers Drumming
1 .. 7 Swans a'Swimming
2 .. 11 Pipers Piping
3 .. 9 Ladies Dancing
4 .. 10 Lords a'Leaping
5 .. 8 Maid a'Milking
Default Sort
0 .. 10 Lords a'Leaping
1 .. 11 Pipers Piping
2 .. 12 Drummers Drumming
3 .. 7 Swans a'Swimming
4 .. 8 Maid a'Milking
5 .. 9 Ladies Dancing
Numeric sort
0 .. 7
1 .. 8
2 .. 9
3 .. 10
4 .. 11
5 .. 12
Natural Sort
1 .. 7 Swans a'Swimming
5 .. 8 Maid a'Milking
3 .. 9 Ladies Dancing
4 .. 10 Lords a'Leaping
2 .. 11 Pipers Piping
0 .. 12 Drummers Drumming

This program can be run from here and you can view the source code here.
(written 2004-09-19, updated 2006-06-05)

 H107 - String Handling in PHP
  [3534] Learning to program in PHP - Regular Expression and Associative Array examples - (2011-12-01)
  [3516] Regular Expression modifiers in PHP - summary table - (2011-11-12)
  [3515] PHP - moving from ereg to preg for regular expressions - (2011-11-11)
  [3424] Divide 10000 by 17. Do you get 588.235294117647, 588.24 or 588? - Ruby and PHP - (2011-09-08)
  [3020] Handling (expanding) tabs in PHP - (2010-10-29)
  [2629] Curly braces within double quoted strings in PHP - (2010-02-09)
  [2238] Handling nasty characters - Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl, Lua - (2009-06-14)
  [2165] Making Regular Expressions easy to read and maintain - (2009-05-10)
  [2046] Finding variations on a surname - (2009-02-17)
  [1799] Regular Expressions in PHP - (2008-09-16)
  [1613] Regular expression for 6 digits OR 25 digits - (2008-04-16)
  [1603] Do not SHOUT and do not whisper - (2008-04-06)
  [1533] Short and sweet and sticky - PHP form input - (2008-02-06)
  [1372] A taster PHP expression ... - (2007-09-30)
  [1336] Ignore case in Regular Expression - (2007-09-08)
  [1195] Regular Express Primer - (2007-05-20)
  [1058] PHP Regular expression to extrtact link and text - (2007-01-31)
  [1008] Date conversion - PHP - (2006-12-26)
  [728] Looking ahead and behind in a Regular Expression - (2006-05-22)
  [716] Evaluating arithmetic expressions in configuration files - (2006-05-10)
  [642] How similar are two words - (2006-03-11)
  [608] Don't expose your regular expressions - (2006-02-15)
  [589] Robust PHP user inputs - (2006-02-03)
  [574] PHP - dividing a string up into pieces - (2006-01-23)
  [560] The fencepost problem - (2006-01-10)
  [558] Converting between acres and hectares - (2006-01-08)
  [493] Running a Perl script within a PHP page - (2005-11-12)
  [463] Splitting the difference - (2005-10-13)
  [422] PHP Magic Quotes - (2005-08-22)
  [337] the array returned by preg_match_all - (2005-06-06)
  [31] Here documents - (2004-08-28)

H999 - Additional PHP Material
  [3210] Catchable fatal error in PHP ... How to catch, and alternative solutions such as JSON - (2011-03-22)
  [3118] Arrays of arrays - or 2D arrays. How to program tables. - (2011-01-02)
  [2684] Exception handling in PHP - (2010-03-18)
  [2215] If nothing, make it nothing. - (2009-06-02)
  [2073] Extra PHP Examples - (2009-03-09)
  [1623] PHP Techniques - a workshop - (2008-04-26)
  [1519] Flipping images on your web page - (2008-01-26)
  [1505] Script to present commonly used images - PHP - (2008-01-13)
  [1485] Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members. - (2007-12-26)
  [1451] More PHP sample and demonstration programs - (2007-12-01)
  [1391] Ordnance Survey Grid Reference to Latitude / Longitude - (2007-10-14)
  [1390] Converting from postal address to latitude / longitude - (2007-10-13)
  [1389] Controlling and labelling Google maps via PHP - (2007-10-13)
  [1270] PHP Standalone - keyboard to screen - (2007-07-18)
  [1194] Drawing hands on a clock face - PHP - (2007-05-19)
  [1104] Drawing dynamic graphs in PHP - (2007-03-09)
  [1053] Sorting people by name in PHP - (2007-01-26)
  [1020] Parallel processing in PHP - (2007-01-03)
  [1010] Dates, times, clickable diarys in PHP - (2006-12-28)
  [937] Display an image from a MySQL database in a web page via PHP - (2006-11-22)
  [917] Syntax checking in PHP - (2006-11-07)
  [839] Reporting on the 10 largest files or 10 top scores - (2006-08-20)
  [822] PHP - a team member leaves - (2006-08-04)
  [806] Check your user is human. Have him retype a word in a graphic - (2006-07-17)
  [789] Hot answers in PHP - (2006-07-02)
  [687] Presentation, Business and Persistence layers in Perl and PHP - (2006-04-17)
  [665] PHP Image viewing application - (2006-04-01)
  [603] PHP - setting sort order with an associative array - (2006-02-13)
  [563] Merging pictures using PHP and GD - (2006-01-13)
  [483] Double Dollars in PHP - (2005-11-02)
  [468] Stand alone PHP programs - (2005-10-18)
  [372] Time calculation in PHP - (2005-07-08)
  [322] More maps - (2005-05-23)
  [320] Ordnance Survey - using a 'Get a map' - (2005-05-22)
  [239] What and why for the epoch - (2005-03-08)

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Call Centres, selling, and a pause for thought
Posting 1000 letters!
Dress Code
Evening classes to learn PHP
PHP and natural sorting
Drive the drive
International awareness
Gym and swimming - Melksham Blue Pool
Current cost in your local currency
Business is the predominant user of Tomcat, Perl and Tcl