PHP array grouping/conditionals is it possible?

I have a bit of an issue that I dug myself into. I have a list of items that have a field of what type of boxes they will fit in.

For example:

item    | boxtype   | Quantity
-------------------------------
item1   | A-10,C-20 | 3
item2   | C-10,D-20 | 2

The letter in the boxtype-column is the box type, the number that follows is how m开发者_高级运维any of the item can fit in it.

What I am trying to figure out how to use the least amount of boxes. I originally just divided the quantity by the letter number, if it was under 1 I used that box.

But on cases like the above, where i would use Box A for item1, on item2 I would have to use C. It would be better to use box C for both items since all of both items would fit.

Of course this is just a simplied version of the issue, if needed I could elaborate with more defined example. I was just wondering could I do all the sorting with arrays?

Thanks for any point in the right direction

EDIT - adding this array, from this array, is there an easy way test for conditions of the letters to determine which box type should be used?

    Array
    (
        [AC] => Array
            (
                [A] => 0.75
                [C] => 0.15
            )

        [CD] => Array
            (
                [C] => 0.2
                [D] => 0.1
            )
    )

---

Sounds like a 1D/linear bin packing problem. I don't see what it has to do with a particular language (PHP) or feature (arrays). For those, please come up with a more concrete example (e.g.: How do I sort this array in PHP? array(blah => blah)). For the former, do not specify a language at all, focus on the algorithm.