R help - Oct 2005 - Sorting Numeric and Character Data

Hello,

I have what seems like an easy question to answer, but I'm struggling  
with it.

I have a set of categorical data that I am reading in, looking  
something like:

"category" "result"
"A" .234
"B" .123
"C" .564
"D" -.452
"E" .112
"F" -.106

I'd like to plot this twice on two separate dot charts, once with the  
data ordered in ascending order by the "category" (character) column;
the other graph ordered in descending order by the "result" (numeric)
column.

My trouble is this: if I read this in as a data frame, I can order it  
using something like data[order(d3$result),], but the "category"  
column seems to get converted to an integer data type, which then  
plots as numbers rather than letters on the dotchart(). If I read it  
in as separate vector columns using scan() and copy-and-paste, I  
don't know how to order both vectors together (such that "A" and
.234
remain together).

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

Tom

Use read.table(myfile, header = TRUE, as.is = TRUE) where as.is=TRUE
causes read.table not to convert character data to factors.

On 10/21/05, Thomas Hopper <tomhopper at comcast.net>
wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have what seems like an easy question to answer, but I'm struggling
> with it.
>
> I have a set of categorical data that I am reading in, looking
> something like:
>
> "category" "result"
> "A" .234
> "B" .123
> "C" .564
> "D" -.452
> "E" .112
> "F" -.106
>
> I'd like to plot this twice on two separate dot charts, once with the
> data ordered in ascending order by the "category" (character)
column;
> the other graph ordered in descending order by the "result"
(numeric)
> column.
>
> My trouble is this: if I read this in as a data frame, I can order it
> using something like data[order(d3$result),], but the "category"
> column seems to get converted to an integer data type, which then
> plots as numbers rather than letters on the dotchart(). If I read it
> in as separate vector columns using scan() and copy-and-paste, I
> don't know how to order both vectors together (such that "A"
and .234
> remain together).
>
> Any help would be much appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Tom
>
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