Search code examples
rsortingstring-length

R base function to sort vector of strings based on length

I was wondering if there is an already made function in R base package that can sort a vector of strings taking into consideration the length of each element and then of course the lexicographical order. For instance after a sort call on some vector holding age groups you would have:

v <- c("00-04", "05-09", "10-14", "100-104", "105-109", "110-114", "15-19", "20-24"..etc)

whereas I would like to have:

v <- c("00-04", "05-09", "10-14", "15-19", "20-24"..etc.. "100-104", "105-109", "110-114")
Solution

  • Simply with order : 

    v[order(nchar(v), v)]

## [1] "00-04"   "05-09"   "10-14"   "15-19"   "20-24"   "100-104" "105-109" "110-114"

    Is that what you're looking for?