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)

Answer 1

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);

Answer 2

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 ) 

Answer 3

Try this

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

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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);