How to sort a data frame by columns in R

Question

I am considering the below data frame as an example to sort the data frame by columns. I want to sort the column 'd' in a descending manner and column 'b' in an ascending order. 

data <- data.frame(b = factor(c("Hey", "Medium", "Hey", "Low"), 
      levels = c("Low", "Medium", "Hey"), ordered = TRUE),
      x = c("W", "Z", "W", "Y"), y = c(7, 4, 8, 8),
      d = c(2, 2, 2, 3))
data
    b    x y d
1  Hey   W 7 2
2 Medium Z 4 2
3  Hey   W 8 2
4 Low    Y 8 3

Answer 1

You can just use the order function with the column index as follows:

data[ order(-data[,4], data[,1]), ]
    b    x y d
4 Low    Y 8 3
2 Medium Z 4 2
1  Hey   W 7 2
3  Hey   W 8 2

Answer 2

You can use dplyr function arrange() like below.

library(dplyr)
data = data %>% arrange(-d)