[R] multicolumn sort on dataframe?

[Anne York]

Forget about my previous post. That method only works in 
very special cases. Use order with mutiple arguments.

On Sat, 27 Mar 2004, Anne York wrote:

AY > On Fri 26 Mar 2004, Jeff D. Hamann wrote:
AY >                                                                                 
AY > >I couldn't find any reference to this in the FAQ, but is it 
AY > >possible to sort a  dataframe by multiple columns?
AY >                                                                                 
AY > >I've created some code, similar to the following:
AY >                                                                                 
AY > >nspr.code <- sp.results$sp.code[order( sp.results$sp.code )]
AY > >nspr.tpa <- sp.results$tpa[order( sp.results$sp.code )]
AY >                                                                                 
AY > >nspr.code <- as.character( levels( nspr.code ) )[nspr.code]
AY > >nspr.tpa <- as.numeric( levels( nspr.tpa ) )[nspr.tpa]
AY >                                                                                 
AY > >hope <- as.data.frame( cbind( nspr.code, as.numeric(nspr.tpa) ) )
AY > 
AY > 
AY > A simple way to sort multiple columns is to paste them 
AY > together and sort the resulting character vector. THat way 
AY > you only have to do one sort. This is a very old method 
AY > taught to me in the first computer course I ever took (date 
AY > censored); the instructor attributed the method to Von 
AY > Neumann but I have no reference. 
AY > 
AY > You have to be careful choosing the sep character in paste. 
AY > 
AY > Here is an example
AY > 
AY > 
AY > > set.seed(78) 
AY > > foo = data.frame(x= sample(letters[1:3],5,replace=TRUE),
AY >                    y= sample(1:5,5,replace=TRUE))
AY > > foo
AY >   x y
AY > 1 c 3
AY > 2 c 2
AY > 3 b 2
AY > 4 c 1
AY > 5 c 3
AY > 
AY > Sorting on y and then by x: 
AY > 
AY > > my.order=order(foo.paste=paste(foo[,2],foo[,1],sep="/"))
AY > > my.order
AY > [1] 4 3 2 1 5
AY > 
AY > 
AY > > my.order=order(paste(foo[,1],foo[,2],sep="/"))
AY > > foo[my.order,]
AY >   x y
AY > 3 b 2
AY > 4 c 1
AY > 2 c 2
AY > 1 c 3
AY > 5 c 3
AY > >
AY > 
AY >