Opening and reading director produces random order

Hello; I have the following section of code that opens and reads a dir and assembles the contents into html table markup: The question is: when this is run on my remote hosting service, the list comes out in a random order, Why and what can I do programatically to correct the order? The remote system is running on a Linux platform, but that shouldn't make a difference. I seem to remember somewhere in the php manual that the sort order may be random and that there was a function for producing a natural sort(?) (while at home in local dev server: Apache running on Mac OSX, the list comes out in the order it appears in the directory) Thank you for time and attention JK the code: @$_dr = opendir($_dir);

               if(!$_dr)
                 {
                  $_stat = '';
                  if(!is_dir($_dir))
                    {
                     $_stat = 'not found';
                    }
                  else if(!is_readable($_dir))
                    {
                     $_stat = 'not readable';
                    }
                  $_out['error'] = "_CONSOLE->mkList() error: ".$_dir." not opened for read: ".$_stat;
                  return $_out['error'];
                 }
               $_itr = 0;
               $_out['mrkUp'] = "<table><tr><td><span class=\"norm\">Owner</span></td><td><span class=\"norm\">type and permissions</span></td><td><span class=\"norm\">Octal value</span></td><td><span class=\"norm\">Name</span></td></tr>\n";
               while(false !== ($_x = readdir($_dr)))
                 {
                  $_owner = self::getOwner($_dir.$_x);
                  $_octPerms = substr(sprintf('%o', fileperms($_dir.$_x)), -4);
                  $_out['mrkUp'] .= "<tr><td><span class=\"norm\" id=\"o_".$_itr."\">".$_owner."</span></td><td><span class=\"norm\" id=\"p_".$_itr."\">".self::getWRXPerms($_dir.$_x)."</span></td><td><span class=\"norm\" id=\"r_".$_itr."\">".$_octPerms."</span></td><td><span class=\"norm\" id=\"n_".$_itr."\">".basename($_x)."</span></td></tr>\n";
                  $_itr++;
                 }
               closedir($_dr);
               $_out['mrkUp'] .= "</table>";
               return $_out;