Sort arrays by other array

Question

I have :

  $years = '2015,2017,2016';
  $short = '21,1,7';
  $long  = '777-21/2015,777-1/2017,777-7/2016';

I need to rearrange them by years, descending. So that I get :

  $years == '2017,2016,2015';
  $short == '1,7,21';
  $long  == '777-1/2017,777-7/2016,777-21/2015';

explode(',',$years), rearranging $years and using the keys as a pattern may be a good solution but I'm not sure how to do it.

hmmmm I smell [XY problem](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem) here, if I'm correct then add the big goal please :) — niceman, Feb 21 '17 at 20:25
A guess on what @niceman said, why are you not storing the dates in one variable? That way you can sort it really easy... — Nytrix, Feb 21 '17 at 20:28
strings are user defined inputs values, php part should rearrange them so that no issue occures in future processing — Pavel Cechir, Feb 21 '17 at 20:32
So you have one text input for day, one for month and one for year ? if that's so then why not have one input for the complete date ? if you don't care about old browsers you can have `` and you're good to go, even if you care one text input is much easier — niceman, Feb 21 '17 at 20:37
with one text input you can parse the string into a date with javascript or php(pretty sure you'll find a built-in for this) and you can validate the format and tell the user to put it in a specific format you choose — niceman, Feb 21 '17 at 20:40
It is not about the date, I just need to reorder the data ($short and $long) the same way how years would rearange themself descending. (strings shouls remain strings in all the variables) — Pavel Cechir, Feb 21 '17 at 20:44
if it's not about the date then we know nothing about X in the XY problem :) — niceman, Feb 21 '17 at 20:46
ok, rearranging '2015,2017,2016' to '2017,2016,2015' means moving '2017'(second in string) to be first, '2016'(third in string) to become second and '2015'(first in string) to become third. I need to use the same pattern for the remaining two strings $short,$long — Pavel Cechir, Feb 21 '17 at 20:51
I know what "rearranging" means, what I meant is exactly like the example the answer to the question [here](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/66377/what-is-the-xy-problem) includes — niceman, Feb 21 '17 at 20:54

score 0 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:17

I don't know why Mark Baker deleted his, but this is similar:

$years = explode(',', $years);
$short = explode(',', $short);
$long  = explode(',', $long);

array_multisort($years, SORT_DESC, $short, $long);

$years = implode(',', $years);
$short = implode(',', $short);
$long  = implode(',', $long);

explode() the strings into arrays
sort $years, sorting the others the same
implode() back to strings

NOTE: You should pay attention to the comments and post a larger question to get a better strategy for doing this. Using comma separated values is probably the wrong approach from the start.

Big thanks, it is just what I was trying to achieve. – Pavel Cechir Feb 21 '17 at 21:02 — Pavel Cechir, Feb 21 '17 at 21:02

Sort arrays by other array

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