Quick-R: Sorting (2024)

To sort a data frame in R, use the order( ) function. By default, sorting is ASCENDING. Prepend the sorting variable by a minus sign to indicate DESCENDING order. Here are some examples.

Run this code

# sorting examples using the mtcars datasetattach(mtcars)# sort by mpgnewdata <- mtcars[order(mpg),]# sort by mpg and cylnewdata <- mtcars[order(mpg, cyl),]#sort by mpg (ascending) and cyl (descending)newdata <- mtcars[order(mpg, -cyl),]detach(mtcars)

To practice, try this sorting exercise with the order() function.

Quick-R: Sorting (2024)

FAQs

How do I sort data from smallest to largest in R? ›

To sort a data frame in R, use the order( ) function. By default, sorting is ASCENDING. Prepend the sorting variable by a minus sign to indicate DESCENDING order.

How do you sort by more than one column in R? ›

In R, the “order” and “arrange” functions can be used to sort data frame by multiple columns. For example, the command “arrange(data, col1, col2, col3)” will sort the data frame “data” by columns “col1”, “col2”, and “col3” in ascending order.

Which sorting algorithm does R use? ›

Sorting Functions in R Base Package

They are sort() , rank() , and order(). sort() sorts a vector into ascending order. rank() returns the sample ranks of the values in a vector. order() sorts the values into ascending order and returns the indices of the vector in sorted order.

How do you sort rows by column value in R? ›

To sort the rows of a dataframe according to column values, use the order() function. The order() function takes one or more vectors as arguments, and returns an integer vector indicating the order of the vectors. You can use the output of order() to index a dataframe, and thus change its order.

What is the fastest sorting algorithm for large data? ›

Quicksort is the fastest known comparison-based sorting algorithm when applied to large, unordered, sequences. It also has the advantage of being an in-place (or nearly in-place) sort.

What is the shortcut for sort largest to smallest? ›

Sorting a Single Column

Let's sort the data based on the Price of each house in descending order. Ctrl + Shift + L. Click on the down arrow on the List Price column. Select Largest to Smallest.

How do I sort data with multiple rows? ›

Sort by more than one column or row
  1. Select any cell in the data range.
  2. On the Data tab, in the Sort & Filter group, click Sort.
  3. In the Sort dialog box, under Column, in the Sort by box, select the first column that you want to sort.
  4. Under Sort On, select the type of sort. ...
  5. Under Order, select how you want to sort.

How do I sort multiple columns at the same time? ›

Here's how to do a custom sort:
  1. Select Custom Sort.
  2. Select Add Level.
  3. For Column, select the column you want to Sort by from the drop-down, and then select the second column you Then by want to sort. ...
  4. For Sort On, select Values.
  5. For Order, select an option, like A to Z, Smallest to Largest, or Largest to Smallest.

How do I select multiple rows and columns in R? ›

To pick out single or multiple columns use the select() function. The select() function expects a dataframe as it's first input ('argument', in R language), followed by the names of the columns you want to extract with a comma between each name.

What is Quick Sort in R? ›

quickSort(array, q+1, r); The partition places the pivot in the correct spot and returns the index. You then use the pivot index to sort the two remaining arrays, and since the pivot is already "sorted" you just sort the subarrays to indexes one below and one above the pivot.

What is the most simple sorting algorithm? ›

Bubble sort is considered the simplest sorting algorithm. It goes through an entire array and compares each neighboring number. It then swaps the numbers and keeps doing this until the list is in ascending order.

Which is the efficient algorithm for sorting? ›

Quicksort. Quicksort is one of the most efficient sorting algorithms, and this makes of it one of the most used as well. The first thing to do is to select a pivot number, this number will separate the data, on its left are the numbers smaller than it and the greater numbers on the right.

How to organize data in R? ›

There is a function in R that you can use (called the sort function) to sort your data in either ascending or descending order. The variable by which sort you can be a numeric, string or factor variable. You also have some options on how missing values will be handled: they can be listed first, last or removed.

How do I sort rows of a DataFrame based on column value? ›

Sorting a Pandas DataFrame from one column can be done using the sort_values() method. The sort_values() method sorts the DataFrame based on the values of one or more columns. Note that we set the ascending parameter to False to sort the values in descending order.

How to reorder rows in R? ›

Arrange rows

The dplyr function arrange() can be used to reorder (or sort) rows by one or more variables. Instead of using the function desc(), you can prepend the sorting variable by a minus sign to indicate descending order, as follow. If the data contain missing values, they will always come at the end.

How do you sort data from smallest to largest? ›

Sort numbers

Select a cell in the column you want to sort. On the Data tab, in the Sort & Filter group, do one of the following: To sort from low to high, click. (Sort Smallest to Largest).

How do you sort an array from smallest to largest? ›

A simple solution is to first find the smallest element and swap it with the first element. Then find the largest element, swap it with the second element, and so on.

How do you reverse the order of rows in R? ›

We can also use the '-' sign inside the order() function and before the data frame name and column name to reverse the ascending order. The arrange() function is from the 'dplyr' package so it is essential to load it to use the arrange(). We usually load the packages in R using the library(package_name) function.

References

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