Sorting depends on the locale.  For example, I get

> x <- c(LETTERS[1:3], paste(" ", LETTERS[1:3], sep=""))
> x
[1] "A"  "B"  "C"  " A" " B" " C"
> sort(x)
[1] " A" " B" " C" "A"  "B"  "C"
>

On Linux (Fedora Core 1) I set LANG=C, which is necessary for some other (non-R) things to work.

-roger

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
The following is not what I expected in sorting characters (single letters and the same letters with preceding spaces).
Can someone enlighten me as to why the following might be a correct result for sorting?


; x <- c(LETTERS[1:3], paste(" ", LETTERS[1:3], sep=""))
; x
[1] "A"  "B"  "C"  " A" " B" " C"
; sort(x)
[1] "A"  " A" "B"  " B" "C"  " C"
; sort(x, method="shell")
[1] "A"  " A" "B"  " B" "C"  " C"
; sort(x, method="quick")
[1] "A"  " A" "B"  " B" "C"  " C"

I would expect the result to be " A" " B" " C" "A" "B" "C" instead, going by ASCII codes (and a quick check with S-Plus 6.2 shows that this is what S-Plus thinks the sorted sequence is).

Thanks,

        Andreas Krause

PS. Version specs:

; version
_ platform i686-pc-linux-gnu
arch i686 os linux-gnu system i686, linux-gnu status major 1 minor 9.1 year 2004 month 06 day 21 language R


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