Re-organise a character vector

Sort, order and rank strings in a character vector alphabetically.

chr_sort() returns a sorted vector.

chr_order() returns the desired order when used for sub-setting i.e. x[chr_order(x)] is the same as chr_sort(x). This is particularly useful for sorting many vectors in the same way.

chr_rank() returns the rank of the strings; rank 1 is given to the string that would be first in the sorted list.

Usage

chr_sort(strings, decreasing = FALSE)

chr_order(strings, decreasing = FALSE)

chr_rank(strings, decreasing = FALSE)

Arguments

strings

A character vector, where each element of the vector is a character string.

decreasing

Logical. If FALSE (the default) strings will be ordered alphabetically from low to high i.e. A to Z; if TRUE sort from high to low or Z to A.

Value

chr_sort(): A sorted character vector the same length as strings.

chr_order(): An integer vector the same length as strings.

chr_rank(): An integer vector the same length as strings.

See also

sort(), order() and rank() which these functions are wrappers around.

Examples

strings <- c("cherry", "apple", "banana")

chr_sort(strings)
#> [1] "apple"  "banana" "cherry"
chr_order(strings)
#> [1] 2 3 1
chr_rank(strings)
#> [1] 3 1 2
chr_sort(strings, decreasing = TRUE)
#> [1] "cherry" "banana" "apple"

strings[chr_order(strings)]
#> [1] "apple"  "banana" "cherry"