Simplest way to plot changes in ranking between two ordered lists in R?

Question

I\'m wondering if there is an easy way to plot the changes in position of elements between 2 lists in the form of a directed bipartite graph in R. For example, list 1 and 2

Answer 1

With ggplot2:

v1 <- c("a","b","c","d","e","f","g")
v2 <- c("b","x","e","c","z","d","a")

o <- 0.05
DF <- data.frame(x = c(rep(1, length(v1)), rep(2, length(v2))),
                 x1 = c(rep(1 + o, length(v1)), rep(2 - o, length(v2))),
                 y = c(rev(seq_along(v1)), rev(seq_along(v2))),
                 g = c(v1, v2))

library(ggplot2)
library(grid)
ggplot(DF, aes(x=x, y=y, group=g, label=g)) +
  geom_path(aes(x=x1), arrow = arrow(length = unit(0.02,"npc")), 
            size=1, color="green") +
  geom_text(size=10) +
  theme_minimal() +
  theme(axis.title = element_blank(),
        axis.text = element_blank(),
        axis.ticks = element_blank(),
        panel.grid = element_blank())

This can of course be wrapped in a function easily.