[Plugin: Connections] No allowing particular shortcode combinations

I am using wordpress 3.2.1
connections 0.7.1.6
PHP Version 5.2.8
on apache 2
sme server 7
I am unable to use to attributes together
‘category_name’
‘category_in’

<?php connectionsEntryList( array( ‘category_name’=>’Depute Head Teacher’,’category_in’=>’117′,’template’=>’staff-profile’) )

this always returns no results

there are entries for this query.

This works fine on PHP Version 5.3.5

I have tracked it down to
class.retrieve.php line 216
if ( !empty($atts[‘id’]) || !empty($entryIDs) ) $where[] = ‘AND id IN (\” . implode(“‘, ‘”, array_unique( array_merge( (array) $atts[‘id’], (array) $entryIDs ), SORT_NUMERIC) ) . ‘\’)’;

The problem seems to be with function array_unique.
if it is used with SORT_NUMERIC sort flat it always replaces array with null.
If i remove the sort flag array_unique works fine.

Its probably an incompatibility with the php version I have, but unfortunately I am tied to this version.

just to clarify on my server
$input = array(4, “4”, “3”, 4, 3, “3”);
$result = array_unique($input,SORT_NUMERIC);
var_dump($result);

returns
NULL