


You can order character or categorical data in R in different ways. In the following case, the sorting will be the same as sorting a vector. # Custom sortingįinally, it could be interesting to order a list element. If preferred, you can manually create a custom order specifying the names or the index of the elements inside the c function. You can order the elements of the list alphabetically using the order and names functions as follows: # Order elements alphabetically Consider, for instance, the following sample list: my_list <- list(b = 1:10, a = letters, c = matrix(1:2, ncol = 2)) There are three ways for ordering a list in R: sorting the elements in alphabetical order, creating a custom order, or ordering a specific list element.
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In this section you will learn how to sort a list in R. Note that the complaints column is now sorted for those values where the privileges column has ties. # Order by 'privileges' column and then by 'complaints' column This is very useful when the main column you are ordering has ties. In addition, in case you need sorting your data frame by multiple columns, specify more columns inside the order function. Note that in case of ties, the order is based on the index of the rows. Head(ordered_df) complaints privileges learning Consequently, you could type: # Order by privileges column Suppose you want to order the data frame by the privileges column in ascending order. order(vec, na.last = FALSE) 5 8 3 4 7 1 2 6 Note that if you prefer removing the NA values, remember to call the na.omit or use some similar approach. In case you want the NAvalues to be displayed at the beginning you can set the na.last argument to FALSE. If the vector contains any NA values there will be at the end of the index vector by default. If you set the decreasing argument to TRUE, you will have the vector of indices in descending order. The output is an index vector that in this example means that if you want to sort the vector in ascending order, you have to put the fourth element first (14), then the third (25), then the first (34) and the greatest value is the second (47). However, it is common to use the order function with just one vector. Note that the main difference between order and sort.list is that the first it is designed for more than one vector of the same length. Partial = NULL, # Vector indices for partial sorting Method = c("auto", "shell", "radix")) # Method to be used. Na.last = TRUE, # Whether to put NA values at the beginning or at the end The syntax with summarized descriptions of the arguments is as follows: order(x, # Sequence of vectors of the same lengthĭecreasing = FALSE, # Whether to sort in increasing or decreasing order The R order function returns a permutation of the order of the elements of a vector. 3 Difference between sort and order in R.
