I recently upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 which includes php 5.3.2. Not long after upgrading, I noticed that transactions in my stock tracking program were no longer sorting correctly. At first, I thought the sort function, uksort, might have subtly changed. But, no, the manual didn't mention anything, and the manual and comment examples appeared to line-up with my code nicely.
Next, I checked the apache error log where I got my first clue as to the madness I was about to uncover:
PHP Warning: uksort(): Array was modified by the user comparison function in ... on line 195I double-checked my code. Nope. No modification of the array being sorted. What gives? I was using a global statement so that I could access the array being sorted...
A Google search on the global statement turned up another way to access global variables, the $GLOBALS array. Could php be overzealously assuming that access of a variable via a global statement constitutes modification? Well, maybe using $GLOBALS would solve that problem.
I switched from global to $GLOBALS, and, voila, sorting worked again! Apparently php does equate using a global variable via the global statement to modification of that variable. Geez!
P.S. uksort was returning a false value indicating that the sort had failed.
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