<?php/**I came up with an easy way to sort database-style results. This does what example 3 does, except it takes care of creating those intermediate arrays for you before passing control on to array_multisort(). */function array_orderby(){  $args = func_get_args();  $data = array_shift($args);  foreach ($args as $n => $field) {    if (is_string($field)) {      $tmp = array();      foreach ($data as $key => $row)        $tmp[$key] = $row[$field];      $args[$n] = $tmp;      }  }  $args[] = &$data;  call_user_func_array('array_multisort', $args);  return array_pop($args);}/*The sorted array is now in the return value of the function instead of being passed by reference.*/$data[] = array('volume' => 67, 'edition' => 2);$data[] = array('volume' => 86, 'edition' => 1);$data[] = array('volume' => 85, 'edition' => 6);$data[] = array('volume' => 98, 'edition' => 2);$data[] = array('volume' => 86, 'edition' => 6);$data[] = array('volume' => 67, 'edition' => 7);// Pass the array, followed by the column names and sort flags$sorted = array_orderby($data, 'volume', SORT_DESC, 'edition', SORT_ASC);print_r($sorted)?>

Array(  [0] => Array    (      [volume] => 98      [edition] => 2    )  [1] => Array    (      [volume] => 86      [edition] => 1    )  [2] => Array    (      [volume] => 86      [edition] => 6    )  [3] => Array    (      [volume] => 85      [edition] => 6    )  [4] => Array    (      [volume] => 67      [edition] => 2    )  [5] => Array    (      [volume] => 67      [edition] => 7    ))