I have an Excel worksheet with 20 rows. Using XLConnect I successfully read the data into 'indata'. In order to sort it on the 'Item' column and the 'Price_Per_Item' column I submit: index <- with(indata, order(Item, Price_Per_Item)) sortedData <- indata[index, ] The above works fine but now I do not want to name the columns in the R program directly but pass the names of the columns from a parameter file: index <- with(indata, order(parameters$ItemColumn, parameters$PriceColumn)) sortedData <- indata[index, ] This does not work. Only one row appears in 'sortedData'. I've tried unlisting the two arguments to 'order' but this does not correct the problem. Can anyone suggest a solution to my problem? Your assistance is appreciated. - Barry King -- __________________________ *Barry E. King, Ph.D.* Director of Retail Operations Qualex Consulting Services, Inc. Barry.King@qlx.com O: (317)940-5464 M: (317)507-0661 __________________________ [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
On May 28, 2013, at 08:06 , Barry King wrote:> I have an Excel worksheet with 20 rows. Using XLConnect I successfully > read the data into 'indata'. In order to sort it on the 'Item' column > and the 'Price_Per_Item' column I submit: > > index <- with(indata, order(Item, Price_Per_Item)) > sortedData <- indata[index, ] > > The above works fine but now I do not want to name the columns in the > R program directly but pass the names of the columns from a parameter file: > > index <- with(indata, order(parameters$ItemColumn, > parameters$PriceColumn)) > sortedData <- indata[index, ] > > This does not work. Only one row appears in 'sortedData'. I've tried > unlisting the two arguments to 'order' but this does not correct the > problem. > > Can anyone suggest a solution to my problem? Your assistance is > appreciated.Nothing to do with order as such, but parameters$ItemColumn is presumably a character value (vector of length 1). So you seem to be effectively doing order("A","B") which is the constant 1. You need to spell out your intentions: order(indata[[parameters$ItemColumn]], indata[[parameters$PriceColumn]]) or maybe do.call("order", indata[unlist(parameters[c("ItemColumn","PriceColumn")])]) (both untested) -- Peter Dalgaard, Professor, Center for Statistics, Copenhagen Business School Solbjerg Plads 3, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark Phone: (+45)38153501 Email: pd.mes at cbs.dk Priv: PDalgd at gmail.com
If I understand your problem correctly, you want to use '[[' instead of '$': order(parameters[["ItemColumn"]], parameters[["PriceColumn"]]) On 28/05/2013 07:06, Barry King wrote:> I have an Excel worksheet with 20 rows. Using XLConnect I successfully > read the data into 'indata'. In order to sort it on the 'Item' column > and the 'Price_Per_Item' column I submit: > > index <- with(indata, order(Item, Price_Per_Item)) > sortedData <- indata[index, ] > > The above works fine but now I do not want to name the columns in the > R program directly but pass the names of the columns from a parameter file: > > index <- with(indata, order(parameters$ItemColumn, > parameters$PriceColumn)) > sortedData <- indata[index, ] > > This does not work. Only one row appears in 'sortedData'. I've tried > unlisting the two arguments to 'order' but this does not correct the > problem. > > Can anyone suggest a solution to my problem? Your assistance is > appreciated. > > - Barry King >-- Patrick Burns pburns at pburns.seanet.com twitter: @burnsstat @portfolioprobe http://www.portfolioprobe.com/blog http://www.burns-stat.com (home of: 'Impatient R' 'The R Inferno' 'Tao Te Programming')