Choose second or third rank in repeated value using R

Question

I have some value of x:

x <- c(12, 5, 6, 7, 8, 5, 8, 7, 5, 6, 9, 10)
p <- x[order(x)]
p
[1]  5  5  5  6  6  7  7  8  8  9 10 12

The smallest value of x is 5, but I want to choose the second of the smallest x (6) or third (7).

How to get it?

Answer 1

We can write a function to get nth smallest value, by considering only unique values of already sorted vector p.

get_nth_smallest_value <- function(n) {
   unique(p)[n]
}

get_nth_smallest_value(2)
#[1] 6

get_nth_smallest_value(4)
#[1] 8

---

Or if we need in terms of only x, we can sort them first, take only unique values and then get the value by it's index.

get_nth_smallest_value <- function(n) {
  unique(sort(x))[n]
}

get_nth_smallest_value(2)
#[1] 6

get_nth_smallest_value(3)
#[1] 7