PHP允许在多维数组上执行一些比较复杂的排序——例如，首先对一个嵌套数组使用一个普通的关键字进行排序，然后再根据另一个关键字进行排序。这与使用SQL的ORDER BY语句对多个字段进行排序非常相似。为了能更好的明白它是如何工作的，请仔细看例子：
<?php $data = array(array("id" => 1, "name" => "Boney M", "rating" => 3),
array("id" => 2, "name" => "Take That", "rating" => 1),
array("id" => 3, "name" => "The Killers", "rating" => 4),
array("id" => 4, "name" => "Lusain", "rating" => 3),
); foreach ($data as $key => $value) {
$name[$key] = $value['name'];
$rating[$key] = $value['rating'];
}
array_multisort($rating, $name, $data); print_r($data);?>
根据 rating 升序排序 结果:
Array ([0] => Array ( [id] => 2 [name] => Take That [rating] => 1 ) [1] => Array ( [id] => 1 [name] => Boney M [rating] => 3 ) [2] => Array ( [id] => 4 [name] => Lusain [rating] => 3 ) [3] => Array ( [id] => 3 [name] => The Killers [rating] => 4 ) )
array_multisort()函数是PHP中最有用的函数之一，它有非常广泛的应用范围。另外，就如你在例子中所看到的，它能对多个不相关的数组进行排序，也可以使用其中的一个元素作为下次排序的基础，还可以对数据库结果集进行排序。