CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rfilesorting
user3919708
user3919708

Reputation: 141

Sort file names that have increased numeric characters

I am using this code to read in my files by mtime. However, read reads in the files so quickly that mtime doesnt work.

###### checks all files in directory ########
readinfiles<-function(){
details<- file.info(list.files("filename", all.files=F, full.name=T));
details<- details[with(details, order(as.POSIXct(mtime))),]
file<- rownames(details)
}
all_files<- readinfiles();
list_all_files<- as.list(all_files);
list_all_files;

Is there a way to sort the files by characters the spell numbers? this is what I want.

list_all_files;
THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///onea
THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///twoa
THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///threea
THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///foura

What I get:

list_all_files;
THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///foura
THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///onea
THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///threea
THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///twoa

Upvotes: 1

Views: 165

Answers (2)

David Arenburg
David Arenburg

Reputation: 92292

It is possible to create some helper function using the english package in order to solve this

The helper function

FileSort <- function(x){
  require(english, quietly = TRUE) # Loading the `english` package
  Nums <- as.character(english(seq_len(length(x)))) # Creating a vector of integers written in words (with the same length of the file list)
  Nums <- gsub("\\s", "", Nums) # Remove spaces so, for example, "twenty two" will become "twentytwo"
  temp <- gsub(".*//", "", x) # Retrieving the number out of the file name
  temp <- substr(temp, 1, nchar(temp) - 1) # Removing the `a` at the end
  x <- Map(cbind, x, match(temp, Nums)) # Adding the Numbers column to the file list
  x <- do.call(rbind, x) # Collapsing
  x <- as.list(x[order(as.numeric(x[, 2]))]) # Sorting
  x
}

Your data

ist_all_files <- list("THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///foura",
                       "THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///onea",
                       "THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///threea",
                       "THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///twoa")

Implementation

list_all_files <- FileSort(list_all_files)
list_all_files
# [[1]]
# [1] "THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///onea"
# 
# [[2]]
# [1] "THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///twoa"
# 
# [[3]]
# [1] "THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///threea"
# 
# [[4]]
# [1] "THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///foura"

Upvotes: 1

farnsy
farnsy

Reputation: 2470

I can think of a few ways to start working around this but, honestly, they all seem pretty inconvenient. Is it feasible to rename the files on disk? That's what I would do if it were me. Name them something like 

THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///01_onea
THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///02_twoa
THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///03_threea
THREE20142305//tablesCORRECTED///04_foura

and then sort by name, instead of mtime.

You can rename files through a GUI by hand in less time than it will take you to write an R solution, even though there are 100 of them. If these files are periodically overwritten, it would probably be faster to write a script to rename them one by one (use copy/paste generously) than to write an R workaround. The script would have 100 nearly identical lines and be tedious to write, but still easier than making R understand English number words.

Sorry for the bad news.

============= An example proprocessing script =================

file.rename("onea","01")
file.rename("twoa","02")
file.rename("threea","03")
file.rename("foura","04")
file.rename("fivea","05")
file.rename("sixa","06")
file.rename("sevena","07")
file.rename("eighta","08")
file.rename("ninea","09")
file.rename("tena","10")
file.rename("elevena","11")
file.rename("twelvea","12")
file.rename("thirteena","13")
file.rename("fourteena","14")
file.rename("fifteena","15")
file.rename("sixteena","16")
file.rename("seventeena","17")
file.rename("eighteena","18")
file.rename("nineteena","19")
file.rename("twentya","20")
file.rename("twentyonea","21")
file.rename("twentytwoa","22")
file.rename("twentythreea","23")
file.rename("twentyfoura","24")
file.rename("twentyfivea","25")
file.rename("twentysixa","26")
file.rename("twentysevena","27")
file.rename("twentyeighta","28")
file.rename("twentynine","29")
file.rename("twentya","20")

Copy paste and tweak for another 10 minutes or so (depending on your text editor search/replace skill), put this at the top of your program and you have a feasible solution if you don't get a better one from someone else.

Upvotes: 0

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