php排序合并数组

Question

I have a list of (xml) items, each item has a category and a name:

Category | Name

1         |  Joe
2         |  Carol
3         |  Bruce
1         |  Michael     
1         |  Alan
2         |  Brian

I want to sort the names ascending within categories descending like so:

Category | Name

3         |  Bruce
2         |  Brian
2         |  Carol
1         |  Alan
1         |  Joe
1         |  Michael

with the aim of creating a Select dropdown on a web page with each category as an OptGroup and the names sorted within the OptGroup. I have very little experience with PHP, I think I need to sort merge arrays, but after many hours trying to understand how to, I'm not making much progress. Any help greatly appreciated

Answer 1

$name = array("Joe", "Carol", "Bruce", "Michael","Alan","Brian");
sort($name);

php-in built function sort will produce desire result