[R] sorting a data frame by rownames

[Rolf Turner]

Can't you just do

	newdat <- newdat[order(row.names(newdat)),]

Or am I missing something?

	cheers,

		Rolf Turner

On 9/07/2008, at 2:58 PM, Michael Rennie wrote:

> Hi there,
>
> I'm sure there's an easy answer to this, and I can't wait to see it.
>
> The question: is there an easy way to sort a data frame by it's row  
> names?
>
> My dilemma:
>
> I've had to pull apart a data frame, run it through a loop to do some
> calculations and generate new variables, and then re-construct the  
> chunks
> back into a data frame at the end.
>
> Doing this preserves the row names from the original data frame  
> (which are
> informative), so i thought this would make it easy to bring it back  
> to it's
> original order.
>
> However, to do this, I've had to include the row names as a column,  
> and then
> sort by that at the end, which seems terribly redundant and makes  
> me think
> there's an easier way to do this.
>
> See some example code below:
>
> ###########################
> #build a dataframe
>
> set.seed(12345)
> a<-sample(1:50, 15)
> b<-15:1
> c<-rep(1:3, 5)
>
> ex.dat<-data.frame(a,b,c)
>
> #pull it apart; in my case, each chunk is going through a loop and  
> being
> spit out in a list
>
> sub3<-subset(ex.dat, c=="3")
> sub2<-subset(ex.dat, c=="2")
> sub1<-subset(ex.dat, c=="1")
>
> #put it back together; in my case, pull out the parts of the list  
> generated
> by the loop that hold the data
>
> newdat<-rbind(sub3, sub2, sub1)
>
> #rebuild it such that it can be re-organized into it's original order
>
> rn<-as.numeric(row.names(newdat))
>
> new2<-data.frame(newdat, rn)
>
> new3 = new2[do.call(order, new2["rn"]), ]
>
> ######################
>
> It's those last three lines of code that I'm sure are unnecessary; why
> include a column of information for something that's already there?  
> However,
> most of the posted solutions to sorting of data frames have to do with
> sorting by particular variables, not by the row names (which are just
> typically 1:n, and is rarely informative). So, this is the solution  
> I came
> up with based on what I can find out there currently.
>
> Looking forward to any thoughts or suggestions.
>
> --
> Michael D. Rennie
> Ph.D. Candidate
> University of Toronto at Mississauga
> 3359 Missisagua Rd. N.
> Mississauga, ON L5L 1C6
> Ph: 905-828-5452 Fax: 905-828-3792
> www.utm.utoronto.ca/~w3rennie
>
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
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