Custom sorting (non-alphabetical)

Question

I have a categorical data set that looks similar to:

A < -data.frame(animal = c(\"cat\",\"cat\",\"cat\",\"dog\",\"dog\",\"dog\",\"elephant\",\"elephant\",         


        

Answer 1

You can also use match - you do not alter column class neither do a factor transformation.

animalOrder = c("dog", "elephant","cat")
colorOrder  = c("green", "blue", "red")
A[ order(match(A$animal, animalOrder), match(A$color, colorOrder)), ]

animal color
6      dog green
4      dog  blue
5      dog   red
9 elephant green
7 elephant  blue
8 elephant   red
3      cat green
1      cat  blue
2      cat   red