Sorting of a Vector in R Programming – sort() Function

sort() Function in detail

In R, the sort() function is used to arrange the elements of a vector in either ascending or descending order. It returns a sorted version of the input vector and can also handle missing values (NA).

Syntax:

sort(x, decreasing, na.last)

Parameters:

• x: The vector to be sorted.
• decreasing: A Boolean value (TRUE or FALSE). If TRUE, sorts the vector in descending order.
• na.last: A Boolean value. If TRUE, places NA values at the end; if FALSE, places them at the beginning.

Example 1: Sorting Numeric Vectors

# Creating a numeric vector
numbers <- c(10, -3, 5, 7, 2, NA, -8, 15)

# Sort in ascending order
sorted_numbers <- sort(numbers)
print(sorted_numbers)

Output:

[1] -8 -3  2  5  7 10 15

Example 2: Sorting with Descending Order and NA Handling

# Creating a numeric vector
values <- c(20, -7, 4, NA, 0, 12, -15)

# Sort in descending order
sorted_desc <- sort(values, decreasing = TRUE)
print(sorted_desc)

# Sort with NA values at the end
sorted_na_last <- sort(values, na.last = TRUE)
print(sorted_na_last)

Output:

[1] 20 12  4  0 -7 -15
[1] -15  -7   0   4  12  20   NA

Example 3: Sorting Character Vectors

# Creating a character vector
cities <- c("Delhi", "Mumbai", "Chennai", "Kolkata")

# Sort alphabetically
sorted_cities <- sort(cities)
print(sorted_cities)

Output:

[1] "Chennai" "Delhi" "Kolkata" "Mumbai"