Sort columns of a dataframe by column name

Question

This is possibly a simple question  but I do not know how to order columns alphabetically   test   data frame C   c 0  2  4  7  8   A   c 4  2  4  7  8   B   c 1  3  8  3  2        C A B   1 0 4 1   2 2 2 3   3 4 4 8   4 7 7 3   5 8 8 2   I like to order the columns by column names alphabetically  to achieve       A B C   1 4 1 0   2 2 3 2   3 4 8 4   4 7 3 7   5 8 2 8   For others I want my own defined order       B A C   1 4 1 0   2 2 3 2   3 4 8 4   4 7 3 7   5 8 2 8   Please note that my datasets are huge  with 10000 variables  So the process needs to be more automated

User · Answer

Here s the obligatory dplyr answer in case somebody wants to do this with the pipe   test   gt        select sort names

User · Answer

Here is what I found out to achieve a similar problem with my data set    First  do what James mentioned above  i e   test    order names test      Second  use the everything   function in dplyr to move specific columns of interest  e g    D    G    K   at the beginning of the data frame  putting the alphabetically ordered columns after those ones    select test  D  G  K  everything

User · Answer

If you only want one or more columns in the front and don t care about the order of the rest   require dplyr  test   gt     select B  everything

User · Answer

You can use order on the names  and use that to order the columns when subsetting   test    order names test      A B C 1 4 1 0 2 2 3 2 3 4 8 4 4 7 3 7 5 8 2 8   For your own defined order  you will need to define your own mapping of the names to the ordering  This would depend on how you would like to do this  but swapping whatever function would to this with order above should give your desired output   You may for example have a look at Order a data frame s rows according to a target vector that specifies the desired order  i e  you can match your data frame names against a target vector containing the desired column order

User · Answer

test   data frame C c 0 2 4  7  8   A c 4 2 4  7  8   B c 1  3  8 3 2     Using the simple following function replacement can be performed  but only if data frame does not have many columns    test  lt - test   c  A    B    C      for others   test  lt - test   c  B    A    C

User · Answer

An alternative option is to use str sort   from library stringr  with the argument numeric   TRUE  This will correctly order column that include numbers not just alphabetically  str sort c  quot V3 quot    quot V1 quot    quot V10 quot    numeric   TRUE     1  V1 V3 V11

User · Answer

test  sort names test      sort on names of columns can work easily

User · Answer

Similar to other syntax above but for learning - can you sort by column names    sort colnames test 1 ncol test

User · Answer

So to have a specific column come first  then the rest alphabetically  I d propose this solution   test   c  myFirstColumn   sort setdiff names test    myFirstColumn

[r] Sort columns of a dataframe by column name

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