Data Management : Sorting and Ordering in R Language

Sorting

Sort function sorts the values of a vector in ascending order (by default) or descending order.

Syntax

sort (x, decreasing = FALSE , ....,)
sort (x, decreasing = FALSE , na . last = NA, ...)

x                       Vector of values to be sorted

decreasing        Should the sort be increasing or decreasing

na.last               for controlling the treatment of NAs.
                          If TRUE, missing values in the data are put last;
                          If FALSE, they are put first;
                          If NA, they are removed.


Example

> y  <-  c(8,5,7,6)
> y
 [1]  8 5 7 6

> sort (y)
 [1]  5 6 7 8

> sort (y , decreasing = TRUE)
 [1]   8 7 6 5

Ordering

Order function sorts a variable according to the order of variable.

Syntax

order (x , decreasing = FALSE, ...,)
order (x, decreasing = FALSE, na.last = TRUE, ...)

x                         Vector of values to be sorted

decreasing          Should the sort be increasing or decreasing

na.last                 for controlling the treatment of NAs.
                           If TRUE, missing values in the data are put last;
                           If FALSE, they are put first;
                           If NA, they are removed. 

Example

> y  <-    c(8,5,7,6)
> y
[1]   8 5 7 6

>  order (y) 
 [1]   2 4 3 1

> order (y, decreasing = TRUE)
 [1]  1 3 4 2