I have a data set (df) with many columns, the names of which contain letters and numbers. For example
pr.2013 pr.2012 pr. 2011 cd.2013 cd.2012 cd.2011 and so on and I want to order them alphabetically to this format
cd.2013 cd.2012 cd.2011 pr.2013 pr.2012 pr. 2011
I tried
df1<-df %>% select(order(colnames(.)))
but with no success. Is there any way to do that in R. Manually is not an option as I have a large number of similar columns.
Many thanks in advance!
If this is your data
pr.2012 pr.2011 pr.2013 cd.2012 cd.2013 cd.2011
1 1 2 3 4 5 6
2 2 3 4 5 6 7
3 3 4 5 6 7 8
Using the strsplit by . and arranged colnames to select the variables in the right order.
library(dplyr)
df[,match(data.frame(t(data.frame(strsplit(colnames(df), "\\.")))) %>%
arrange(X1, desc(X2)) %>%
reframe(paste0(X1, ".", X2)) %>%
unlist(use.names=F), colnames(df))]
cd.2013 cd.2012 cd.2011 pr.2013 pr.2012 pr.2011
1 5 4 6 3 1 2
2 6 5 7 4 2 3
3 7 6 8 5 3 4
df <- structure(list(pr.2012 = 1:3, pr.2011 = 2:4, pr.2013 = 3:5, cd.2012 =
4:6, cd.2013 = 5:7, cd.2011 = 6:8), class = "data.frame", row.names =
c(NA, -3L))