sort value seperated by comma [duplicate]-CodePudding

Hi I am trying to sort two values a and b in ascending order and to get a_out and b_out from both of them

a= c("MN, OP, AB")
b = c("MN, O P, A B")
a_out = "AB,MN,OP"
b_out = "A B,MN,O P"

I have tried with the below statement but unable to get desired output

a_out = sort(a)
b_out = sort(b)

Thanks in advance

CodePudding user response：

Split sort and combine the string.

split_and_sort <- function(x) {
  toString(sort(unlist(strsplit(x, ',\\s*'))))  
}

split_and_sort(a)
#[1] "AB, MN, OP"

split_and_sort(b)
#[1] "A B, MN, O P"

To apply it on column you can use sapply -

split_and_sort <- function(x) {
  sapply(strsplit(x, ',\\s*'), function(x) toString(sort(x)))  
}

df$a <- split_and_sort(df$a)

CodePudding user response：

Split the strings and paste them together with strsplit and unlist:

> toString(sort(unlist(strsplit(a, ",\\s*"))))
[1] "AB, MN, OP"
>

Or with [[1]] instead of unlist:

> toString(sort(strsplit(a, ",\\s*")[[1]]))
[1] "AB, MN, OP"
>