We can also sort in reverse order by using a minus sign ( – ) in front of the variable that we want sorted in reverse order. Moving along, what if we wanted to sort the entire list by the largest birds for each diet? Because each column of a data frame is a vector, you may find that you perform this operation quite frequently. Let’s see how to reverse the order of the dataframe by column wise with an example. We’re going to walk through how to sort data in r. This tutorial is specific to dataframes. #> id weight size I tried scale_y_continuous(trans = "reverse") (from https://stacko… #> 2 2 27 large #> 4 4 22 large #> 1 1 20 small, # Sort by all columns in the data frame, from left to right, # In this particular example, the order will be unchanged. Easy enough, the order function supports the ability to sort using multiple variables. Characters: there isn’t a simple way to do this. #> 2 2 27 large #> 3 3 24 medium Or if you want to skip ahead, see below…. out <- DF[rev(order(as.Date(DF$end))),] However you can have the same effect with a general purpose function: rev… #> 1 1 20 small Answer to 7.2.1: Reverse sort of list. # Use built-in R functions #> 3 3 24 medium #> 4 4 22 large #> 2 2 27 large For the "radix" method, this can be a vector of length equal to the number of arguments in ….For the other methods, it must be length one. It does not sort the underlying data. If you are sorting big files, then /M switch will help you to finish the sorting quickly. Syntax : Sorting in R programming is easy. To sort in descending order we can pass decreasing=TURE. rev provides a reversed version of its argument. We will be using the order( ) function to accomplish this. By default, it sorts in ascending order. You now have a variable called some.states that is a data frame consisting of ten rows and three columns (Region, Population, and Income). order dataframe by column ) : And as you can see, it does a lovely job in sorting the results from largest to smallest. One method is to convert to a factor first and then sort as above. Note that sort is not in-place. We’re going to use conditional indexing to do this quickly. We’re using the ChickWeight data frame example which is included in the standard R distribution. These have the same result. Ways to Select a Subset of Data From an R Data Frame, How To Sort an R Data Frame (this article), first five rows of the data frame for inspection, adding and removing columns from a data frame, How To Create an R Data Frame (this article). # Sort by weight column. In case you want to sort dates with descending order the minus sign doesn't work with Dates. Sort (or order) a vector or factor (partially) intoascending or descending order. If you can imagine someone walking around a research farm with a clipboard for an agricultural experiment, you’ve got the right idea…. Returning to our feathered subjects (the chickens) for a moment, lets start by selecting a list of the chickens who were in the measured on the final day of the study (day 21). # Reverse sort by weight column. It is generic function with a default method for vectors and one for dendrograms. Increasing this limit, will increase the performance of the sort … #> 4 4 22 large Here are a couple of examples. #> 2 2 27 large. #> 4 4 22 large Because each column of a data frame is a vector, you may find that you perform this operation quite frequently. The reverse function is self-explanatory. The overall order of the sort can be reversed with the argument decreasing=TRUE. Sort short_names in reverse alphabetic order. To reverse the order of levels in a factor: # Create a factor with the wrong order of levels sizes <- factor ( c ( "small" , "large" , "large" , "small" , "medium" )) sizes #> [1] small large large small medium #> Levels: large medium small sizes <- factor ( sizes , levels = rev ( levels ( sizes ))) sizes #> [1] small large large small medium #> Levels: small medium large The order function’s default sort is in ascending order (from lowest to highest value). Let’s take a quick pause to explore the difference between sort and order in r . Sort the contents in reverse order. Easy enough…. If you find any errors, please email winston@stdout.org, #> [1] 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110, #> [1] 110 109 108 107 106 105 104 103 102 101. Let’s First create a dataframe 1 #> id weight size I am looking to reverse the order of the y-axis, even though it is categorical. #> 3 3 24 medium Next, we select the first five rows of the data frame for inspection, This yields the following result – which is exactly what we are looking for. -r Option: Sorting In Reverse Order : You can perform a reverse-order sort using the -r flag. It will reverse the order of whatever content you have in your file. It may be more efficient to use indexes within your calculation process. Should the sort be increasing or decreasing? To reverse the direction of a particular column, the method depends on the data type: Numbers: put a - in front of the variable name, e.g. A quick hack to reverse this is to add a minus sign to the sorting variable to indicate you want the results sorted in descending order. sort /R filename /o outputfile. # The call to xtfrm() is needed for factors, # Use built-in R functions #> id weight size #> 1 1 20 small, # Sort by size (decreasing), then by weight (increasing) First, we use a negative sign in from the variable to sort the results in descending order. #> 3 3 24 medium Arranging the data can be of ascending or descending order. For ordering along more than onevariable, e.g., for sorting data frames, see order. I’d like to be a bit more picky, however. In R, we can use the help of the function order(). You can easily get to this by typing: data(ChickWeight) in the R console. Let’s take a look at the different sorts of sort in R, as well as the difference between sort and order in R. Continuing the example in our r data frame tutorial, let us look at how we might able to sort the data frame into an appropriate order. Arguments x. for sort an R object with a class or a numeric, complex, character or logical vector. #> 2 4 22 large Sort() – returns the results sorted in ascending order (you can use a minus sign to get results in descending order).