This is my sample data:
library(data.table)
set.seed(47)
colsize <- 10
DT <- data.table(sortcol1 = as.numeric(sample(CJ(1:27,1:27,1:27)[,paste0(V1,V2,V3)],colsize)),
sortcol2 = sample(CJ(c( LETTERS, " "),c(1:27),c(letters," "))[,paste0(V1,V2,V3)],colsize),
sortcol3 = sample(CJ(c( LETTERS, " "),c(1:27),c(letters," "))[,paste0(V1,V2,V3)],colsize),
sortcol4 = sample(CJ(c( LETTERS, " "),c(1:27),c(letters," "))[,paste0(V1,V2,V3)],colsize),
sortcol5 = sample(CJ(c( LETTERS, " "),c(1:27),c(letters," "))[,paste0(V1,V2,V3)],colsize),
stringsAsFactors = F)
DT
# sortcol1 sortcol2 sortcol3 sortcol4 sortcol5
# <num> <char> <char> <char> <char>
# 1: 241420 F12e V10y D23v J10b
# 2: 71714 P1j Q11y D3s F11e
# 3: 18617 E3w U18t 25n L14r
# 4: 4254 A12i P15f I27h L9m
# 5: 131325 K27w E8j B6q 1q
# 6: 1958 Q1k H23u A18f P23
# 7: 151619 C1y R7i 27q U26l
# 8: 9262 C9n N15o P19q I7t
# 9: 11518 C8l P22a E5g X18z
# 10: 3224 Z26b X17b Y5z Q12k
This is a user input from another source:
input = c("sortcol2", "sortcol1");
This solves the purpose but I need it to be dynamic incorporating the object input
library(gtools)
DT[mixedorder(sortcol2, sortcol1 , decreasing = FALSE)]
DT has a mix of numeric, characters or both. some columns can be entirely numeric.
input can be of length at least 1. It can be in any order.
## sample input values
input <- c("sortcol3","sortcol1")
input <- c("sortcol5")
input <- c("sortcol1","sortcol5","sortcol3") # etc
data.table::setorderv does not take into account mixed alpha and numeric values in a vector.
I need this to be in data.table.
Possible solution
This function seems to be working well. I have edited it to incorporate input.
multi.mixedorder <-\(data, cols, na.last = TRUE, decreasing = FALSE) {
do.call(order, c(
lapply(cols, function(col) {
if (is.character(data[[col]])) {
factor(data[[col]], levels = mixedsort(unique(data[[col]])))
} else {
data[[col]]
}
}),
list(na.last = na.last, decreasing = decreasing)
))
}
DT[multi.mixedorder(DT, input),]