[R] Adding SORT to UNIQUE

[Stephen H. Dawson, DSL]

Thanks everyone for the replies.

It is clear one either needs to write a function or put the unique 
entries into another dataframe.

It seems odd R cannot sort a list of unique column entries with ease. 
Python and SQL can do it with ease.

QUESTION
Is there a simpler means than other than the unique function to capture 
distinct column entries, then sort that list?


*Stephen Dawson, DSL*
/Executive Strategy Consultant/
Business & Technology
+1 (865) 804-3454
http://www.shdawson.com <http://www.shdawson.com>


On 12/20/21 5:53 PM, Rui Barradas wrote:
> Hello,
>
> Inline.
>
> Às 21:18 de 20/12/21, Stephen H. Dawson, DSL via R-help escreveu:
>> Thanks.
>>
>> sort(unique(Data[[1]]))
>>
>> This syntax provides row numbers, not column values.
>
> This is not right.
> The syntax Data[1] extracts a sub-data.frame, the syntax Data[[1]] 
> extracts the column vector.
>
> As for my previous answer, it was not addressing the question, I 
> misinterpreted it as being a question on how to sort by numeric order 
> when the data is not numeric. Here is a, hopefully, complete answer.
> Still with package stringr.
>
>
> cols_to_sort <- 1:4
>
> Data2 <- lapply(Data[cols_to_sort], \(x){
>   stringr::str_sort(unique(x), numeric = TRUE)
> })
>
>
> Or using Avi's suggestion of writing a function to do all the work and 
> simplify the lapply loop later,
>
>
> unisort2 <- function(vec, ...) stringr::str_sort(unique(vec), ...)
> Data2 <- lapply(Data[cols_to_sort], unisort, numeric = TRUE)
>
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> Rui Barradas
>
>
>>
>> *Stephen Dawson, DSL*
>> /Executive Strategy Consultant/
>> Business & Technology
>> +1 (865) 804-3454
>> http://www.shdawson.com <http://www.shdawson.com>
>>
>>
>> On 12/20/21 11:58 AM, Stephen H. Dawson, DSL via R-help wrote:
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>>
>>> Running a simple syntax set to review entries in dataframe columns. 
>>> Here is the working code.
>>>
>>> Data <- read.csv("./input/Source.csv", header=T)
>>> describe(Data)
>>> summary(Data)
>>> unique(Data[1])
>>> unique(Data[2])
>>> unique(Data[3])
>>> unique(Data[4])
>>>
>>> I would like to add sort the unique entries. The data in the various 
>>> columns are not defined as numbers, but also text. I realize 1 and 
>>> 10 will not sort properly, as the column is not defined as a number, 
>>> but want to see what I have in the columns viewed as sorted.
>>>
>>> QUESTION
>>> What is the best process to sort unique output, please?
>>>
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>
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>