Re: Problems with sort.col

["Wuping Xin" <xinxx007@umn.edu>]

But why  y=as.numeric(years(eg$DOB))
gives c(1,1,2) ??   Sicne the default origin is Jan 1, 1966, and the days between the year of 1, and 1966 would overflow the unsigned interger.

Is this why the DOBj negative?

 

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Hi Jonathan,

s-news-owner@lists.biostat.wustl.edu wrote on 25.06.2006 09:52:09:
> Could anyone explain this ?

I'm afraid I can't explain what's going on here. However, I can provide you with a workaround... :-)

> Example:
> eg <- data.frame("name"=c("smith", "smith", "jones"),
>         "DOB"=dates(c("9/20/66", "3/21/66", "4/15/68")),
>         stringsAsFactors=F)
> No problem.  But:
> sort.col(eg, columns.to.sort="@ALL", columns.to.sort.by=c("DOB", "name"))
> Results in:
> Problem in seq: argument along= not matched: seq(along = ..1)
> Use traceback() to see the call stack

Add a column of julian dates and use it for sorting:
> eg$DOBj<-julian(d=as.numeric(days(eg$DOB)),m=as.numeric(months(eg$DOB)),y=as.numeric(years(eg$DOB)))
> sort.col(eg, columns.to.sort="@ALL", columns.to.sort.by=c("DOBj", "name"))

   name        DOB    DOBj
2 smith 03/21/1966 -715430
1 smith 09/20/1966 -715247
3 jones 04/15/1968 -715040

It's a good thing to remember/consider the century cut off to avoid Y2k problems.

(This is obviously not as elegant as if sort.col would work as both of us expected)

Kind regards, Paul M. Diderichsen.
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