How about, say, order()? Did you even try to look in the help, under sort or order since both appear as keywords in your question?
> dput(x) structure(list(V1 = c(57L, 84L, 21L, 61L), V2 = c(91L, 3L, 6L, 16L), V3 = c(31L, 99L, 57L, 84L), V4 = c(61L, 85L, 91L, 3L), V5 = c(16L, 47L, 31L, 99L)), .Names = c("V1", "V2", "V3", "V4", "V5"), class = "data.frame", row.names = c(NA, -4L)) > order(x[,1]) [1] 3 1 4 2 > > x[order(x[,1]),] V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 3 21 6 57 91 31 1 57 91 31 61 16 4 61 16 84 3 99 2 84 3 99 85 47 Sarah On Wed, Mar 7, 2012 at 2:20 PM, Ajay Askoolum <aa2e...@yahoo.co.uk> wrote: > be sorted by row in ascending/descending order? > > Given this matrix: > > 57 91 31 61 16 > 84 3 99 85 47 > 21 6 57 91 31 > 61 16 84 3 99 > > > I want to end with this: > > 21 6 57 91 31 > 57 91 31 61 16 > 61 16 84 3 99 > 84 3 99 85 47 > > > The 'order' of the sort is: 3 1 4 2 > > Also, what R expression will give me the 'order'? > -- Sarah Goslee http://www.functionaldiversity.org ______________________________________________ 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.