qol (version 1.2.0)

sort_plus: Sort Data Frame Rows With Some Additions

Description

Sort data frame rows by the provided variables. sort_plus() is also able to preserve the current order of certain variables and only sort other variables within this order. As another option one can sort a variable with the help of formats, which can be used to e.g. sort a character variable in another than alphabetical order without creating a temporary variable just for sorting.

Usage

sort_plus(
  data_frame,
  by,
  preserve = NULL,
  order = "ascending",
  formats = c(),
  na.last = TRUE
)

Value

Returns a sorted data table.

Arguments

data_frame

A data frame to summarise.

by

A variable vector which contains the variables to sort by.

preserve

A vector containing all variables which current order should be preserved.

order

A vector containing the sorting order for each variable. 'ascending'/'a' or 'descending'/'d' can be used. If there are less orders given than by variables provided, the last given sorting order will be used for the additional by variables.

formats

A list in which is specified which formats should be used to sort certain variables.

na.last

TRUE by default. Specifies whether NA values should come last or first.

Details

sort_plus() is just very loosely based on the 'SAS' procedure Proc Sort. It tries to keep the simplicity, but with some added features.

See Also

Creating formats: discrete_format() and interval_format().

Functions that also make use of formats: frequencies(), crosstabs(), any_table(), recode(), recode_multi(), transpose_plus().

Examples

# Example formats
education. <- discrete_format(
    "1" = "low",
    "2" = "middle",
    "3" = "high")

# Example data frame
my_data <- dummy_data(1000)

# Simple sorting
sort_df1 <- my_data |> sort_plus(by = c(state, sex, age))
sort_df2 <- my_data |> sort_plus(by    = c(state, sex, age),
                                 order = c("ascending", "descending"))

# Character variables will normally be sorted alphabetically. With the help
# of a format this variable can be sorted in a completely different way.
sort_df3 <- my_data |> sort_plus(by      = education,
                                 formats = list(education = education.))

# Preserve the order of the character variable, otherwise it couldn't stay in
# it's current order.
sort_df4 <- sort_df3 |> sort_plus(by       = age,
                                  preserve = education)