Keep going:

    return (cellA > cellB) * 1 + (cellA < cellB) * -1;

More:

    return Math.sign(cellA - cellB);

You don't need the * 1 multiplication:

   return (cellA > cellB) - (cellA < cellB);

does work for NaN... rookie mistake, eh

Math.sign trick doesn't work for strings.

That's true, but the default string comparison sometimes isn't that useful, right? I somehow assumed the data is numbers only, rookie mistake :)

    'ana' > 'Bob'
    '2' > '123'

You usually want to clearly define the order or pre-process the strings in some way (trim them, same casing, etc).

Well, you can pass the strings through .toUpperCase() before comparing them.

Or indeed drop the <, > based approach and use: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

Or: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Refe...

honestly? i like it. properly formatted it looks alright:

    return (
      (cellA === cellB) ? 0 :
      (cellA >   cellB) ? 1 :
      -1
    );

and it's an expression, so i immediately know it won't do any weird control flow. i'd prefer "if/then/else" vs "?/:" but it's not bad

This works fine if the ? operator is right-associative, but in PHP it's left-associative and you have a subtle bug.

I find a better indendation style for this is more like

    condition
        ? truthy
        : falsy

i use that style too sometimes, depends on what's clearer. IME the former usually works better if you have a multiple tests, but the latter is the only readable option if you need to break a case across lines.

yeah, ternary-if is busted in php :/ (far from the only thing that's busted there though...) i'm actually doing some PHP work right now, and never chain ifs to avoid this exact thing.