So, recently and quite commonly, it’s being asked in interviews that how would you sort an array in PHP without using any in-built or PHP core functions like sort(), rsort() etc. And although it’s unnecessary but it does gives a challenge to explore further how this is archived in other languages where such in-built functions might not be available.

I tried to tackle with this problem on my own and using for loops I came close. Then I decided to do some research on Google to see if I’m on the right track and what other options are there? I stumbled upon a question/link on Stackoverflow, on the link below:

The accepted answer with the most rating was as follows:



echo "Unsorted array is: ";
echo "<pre>";

for($j = 0; $j < count($array); $j ++) {
    for($i = 0; $i < count($array)-1; $i ++){ if($array[$i] > $array[$i+1]) {
            $temp = $array[$i+1];

echo "Sorted Array is: ";
echo "</pre>";


This was similar to what I was thinking of. But it seemed too obvious and didn’t feel right. This feeling sent me on a quest of sorting algorithms and I found about this site:

I explained my quest and research on the stackoverflow question well I believe, so, I’m just going to copy paste my answer here:

How efficient is this (two for loops) method? So I created an array of a 10,000 “count” or values and wrote it in a file to be included later on, for consistency, using the following for code:

$str = "<?php \n \$array = array( \n";
for($x = 0; $x <= 10000; $x++){ $str .= mt_rand(0,10000).",\n"; } $str .= "); \n ?>";

$file = fopen('req_arr.php', 'w+');
echo fwrite($file,$str);


$arr = $array;

Then I used the two for loops method as given by most of the guys here, and also measured the time taken:

$start = microtime(1);
$cnt = count($arr);
for($i = 0; $i < $cnt; $i++ ){
    for($j = 0; $j < $cnt-1; $j++ ){ $temp = ''; if($arra[$j] > $arra[$j+1]){
            $temp = $arr[$j];
            $arr[$j] = $arr[$j+1];
            $arr[$j+1] = $temp;
$stop = microtime(1);
echo $stop - $start;
echo '<pre>'; print_r($arr);

And this gave the execution time (in seconds) to be 7.5408220291138.

Note: This code was tested in XAMPP on Windows10, 64 bit, i7 gen 4, 8 GB RAM, and in Chrome.

This is way too much. I’m sure PHP can’t be this sloppy. So next I tested the in-built PHP rsort() function, using the following code:

$start = microtime(1);
rsort($arr, SORT_NUMERIC);
$stop = microtime(1);
echo $stop - $start;

This time, the execution time was just 0.0033688545227051 seconds. JUST 0.003 SECONDS for sorting a 10,000 values array. Clearly, the two for loop method is inefficient to whatever PHP is using in its core.

A quick research on Google/ gave me the answer that PHP uses quicksort algorithm to sort indexed array, and that it doesn’t uses two for loops but recursive function. I dug deeper and found a few examples of quicksearch for C++, Java etc. So, I replicated them in PHP, as follows:

    The main function that implements QuickSort
    arr --> Array to be sorted,
    low  --> Starting index,
    high  --> Ending index
function quickSort(&$arr, $low, $high)
    if ($low < $high)
        /* pi is partitioning index, arr[p] is now
           at right place */
        $pi = partition($arr, $low, $high);
        // Separately sort elements before
        // partition and after partition
        quickSort($arr, $low, $pi - 1);
        quickSort($arr, $pi + 1, $high);

    return $arr;

function partition (&$arr, $low = 0, $high)
    $pivot = $arr[$high];  // pivot
    $i = ($low - 1);  // Index of smaller element

    for ($j = $low; $j <= $high-1; $j++)
        // If current element is smaller than or
        // equal to pivot
        if ($arr[$j] <= $pivot)
            $i++;    // increment index of smaller element
            swap($arr[$i], $arr[$j]);
    swap($arr[$i + 1], $arr[$high]);
    return ($i + 1);

function swap(&$a, &$b){
    $t = $a;
    $a = $b;
    $b = $t;
Obviously, this could be further optimized but I just wanted to get something running and see the results, and this was sufficient. So, now let's see the results:

$start = microtime(1);
$sarr = quickSort($array, 0, $cnt-1);
$stop = microtime(1);
echo $stop - $start;
echo '<pre>';print_r($sarr);

The time taken by this algorithm came out be: 0.022707939147949

Still, not as fast as rsort() but satisfactory. I tried the same with a million values array too but the two for loops array just exhausted the memory and I decided even 10,000 value array proves the theory well.

So, now you know, and I’m sure understanding this would help you in some way and would also make you appreciate the PHP core functions which help us immensely.

Happy Coding… 🙂