Hi: Is this what you're looking for?
Lines <- " ASG,UXW,AFODJEL E,TDIWE,ROFD" # Read in the above lines (for purposes of this example only) # Note the stringsAs Factors = FALSE option! df <- read.csv(textConnection(Lines), header = FALSE, stringsAsFactors = FALSE) closeAllConnections() dm <- as.matrix(df) # convert to a character matrix # Function to sort a character string in alphabetical (lexical) order sortfun <- function(x) paste(sort(unlist(strsplit(x, ''))), collapse = '') # Apply to the rows of the matrix t(apply(df, 1, function(x) sapply(x, sortfun))) Result: V1 V2 V3 [1,] "AGS" "UWX" "ADEFJLO" [2,] "E" "DEITW" "DFOR" If you need to do this for only a subset of your variables, create a character submatrix and follow the script above on that, after which you would need to do some post-processing on your own. HTH, Dennis On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 6:18 PM, onthetopo <jin...@sina.com> wrote: > Hi there, > > I have a large amino acid csv file like this: > > input.txt: > P,LV,Q,Z > P,VL,Q,Z > P,ML,QL,Z > > There is a problem with this file, since LV and VL are in fact the same > thing. > How do I order each element according to alphabetical order so that the > desired output would look like: > > output.txt: > P,LV,Q,Z > P,LV,Q,Z > P,LM,LQ,Z > > > > > -- > View this message in context: > http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/how-to-order-each-element-according-to-alphabet-tp3668997p3668997.html > Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.