How to order rows according to two conditions?

Question

Given data:

df Var1 Var2 Values aaa x 4 aaa y 7 aaa z 6 bbb x 9 bbb y 21 bbb z 13 ccc x 4 ccc y 19 ccc z 0

Goal: Order the rows according to Var1 and Var2

First step: ordering rows according to Var1

df %>% dplyr::arrange(match(Var1, c("bbb", "ccc", "aaa")))

Var1 Var2 Values ccc x 4 ccc y 19 ccc z 0 bbb x 9 bbb y 21 bbb z 13 aaa x 4 aaa y 7 aaa z 6

Second step: How to order Var2 while keeping the order of Var1? How to get the following output?

Var1 Var2 Values ccc z 0 ccc y 19 ccc x 4 bbb z 13 bbb y 21 bbb x 9 aaa z 6 aaa y 7 aaa x 4

Does this answer your question? Sort (order) data frame rows by multiple columns — KoenV
– KoenV, Commented Jan 20, 2022 at 16:00

Maël · Accepted Answer · 2022-01-20 15:28:37Z

3

You can use arrange and desc

df %>% arrange(desc(Var1), desc(Var2)) Var1 Var2 Values 1 ccc z 0 2 ccc y 19 3 ccc x 4 4 bbb z 13 5 bbb y 21 6 bbb x 9 7 aaa z 6 8 aaa y 7 9 aaa x 4

answered Jan 20, 2022 at 15:28

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3 Comments

Thank you very much... What if the order is not necessarily alphabetical. But for example Var1: bbb, ccc, aaa and Var2: yyy, xxx, zzz?

Then you should use a factor variable and order the levels as desired. You can take look here.

Great, thank you!