Ordering Rows in a Data Frame – R

How to re-arrange the rows in a Data Frame using the values in a column.

First we must build the data frame.

Build Data Frame

This data frame will have two columns, one for names and one for ages. We shall call it `df’

> names<-c('jose','shaniqua','Latoya')
> age<-c(12,54,32)

Now we can put both vectors into the data frame.

> df<-data.frame('Name'=names,'Age'=age)
# we can now check it..
df
     Name  Age
1     jose   12
2 shaniqua   54
3   Latoya   32

Ascending Order

We will now order the rows according to age in ascending order, where we go from the smallest to the largest.

> df[order(df$'Age'),]
# wich return
      Name Age
1     jose  12
3   Latoya  32
2 shaniqua  54

Descending Order

Now we will order the rows in descending alphabetical order (using the names), where we will go from z to a.

We can do this by using the rev() function, like so…

> df[rev(order(df$'Name')),]
# which returns
      Name Age
2 shaniqua  54
3   Latoya  32
1     jose  12

DONE!