set.seed(42)
df <- data.frame(letters=c(rep('data', 5), rep('oh', 5), rep('yeah', 5), rep('silly', 5)),
numbers=runif(n = 20, min = 1, max = 10))
I know I can sort by letters col alphabetical then numbers col numeric like this:
df[with(df, order(letters, numbers)), ]
thats close, but I want to force letters col to first be sorted by this order c('silly', 'data', 'oh', 'yeah')
how to do this?
We can use match
df[with(df, order(match(letters, c('silly', 'data', 'oh', 'yeah')), numbers)),]
-output
letters numbers
18 silly 2.057386
19 silly 5.274974
20 silly 6.042995
16 silly 9.460131
17 silly 9.804038
3 data 3.575256
5 data 6.775710
4 data 8.474029
1 data 9.233254
2 data 9.433679
8 oh 2.211999
6 oh 5.671864
9 oh 6.912931
10 oh 7.345583
7 oh 7.629295
14 yeah 3.298859
11 yeah 5.119676
15 yeah 5.160635
12 yeah 7.472010
13 yeah 9.412050
Or another option is factor with levels specified in the order
df[with(df, order(factor(letters, levels = c('silly', 'data', 'oh', 'yeah')), numbers)),]
Here is a dplyr solution using also match as provided by akrun:
library(dplyr)
df %>%
arrange(match(letters, c('silly', 'data', 'oh', 'yeah')), numbers)
letters numbers
1 silly 2.057386
2 silly 5.274974
3 silly 6.042995
4 silly 9.460131
5 silly 9.804038
6 data 3.575256
7 data 6.775710
8 data 8.474029
9 data 9.233254
10 data 9.433679
11 oh 2.211999
12 oh 5.671864
13 oh 6.912931
14 oh 7.345583
15 oh 7.629295
16 yeah 3.298859
17 yeah 5.119676
18 yeah 5.160635
19 yeah 7.472010
20 yeah 9.412050
