Re: General-purpose function for sorting data frame

[Douglas Bates <bates@stat.wisc.edu>]

Jean V Adams wrote:
> Isn't using rev() a more convenient approach?
>
> In your example:
> Oats[order(rev(Oats$nitro), Oats$Variety), ]
>
> For Thom Burnett's recently posted example:
> attach(unsortedData)
> sortedData <- unsortedData[order(sex, rev(race), rev(smoking), weight), ]
> detach("unsortedData")
>
> JVA
I haven't tried it but it doesn't seem like that will work because rev() 
just reverses the order of the elements in the vector.  I think that
order(sex, rev(race), rev(smoking), weight)

will be exactly the same as

order(sex, race, smoking, weight)