Sorting of a Vector in R Programming - sort() Function

Last Updated : 15 Jul, 2025

In R Programming Language we can sort a vector in ascending or descending order using the sort() function. The sort() function returns a sorted version of the input vector.

sort() function in is used to sort a vector by its values. It takes the Boolean value as an argument to sort in ascending or descending order.

Syntax:

sort(x, decreasing, na.last)

Parameters:x: Vector to be sorted

  • decreasing: Boolean value to sort in descending order
  • na.last: Boolean value to put NA at the end

R program to sort a vector

Example 1:

R 
# Creating a vector 
x <- c(7, 4, 3, 9, 1.2, -4, -5, -8, 6, NA) 

# Calling sort() function 
sort(x)

Output:

[1] -8.0 -5.0 -4.0  1.2  3.0  4.0  6.0  7.0  9.0

Example 2:

R 
# Creating a vector 
x <- c(7, 4, 3, 9, 1.2, -4, -5, -8, 6, NA) 

# Calling sort() function 
# to print in decreasing order 
sort(x, decreasing = TRUE) 

# Calling sort() function 
# to print NA at the end 
sort(x, na.last = TRUE)

Output:

[1]  9.0  7.0  6.0  4.0  3.0  1.2 -4.0 -5.0 -8.0
[1] -8.0 -5.0 -4.0  1.2  3.0  4.0  6.0  7.0  9.0   NA

Example 3:

R 
# Create a character vector
names <- c("Vipul", "Raj", "Singh", "Jhala")

# Sort the vector in alphabetical order
sorted_names <- sort(names)
print(sorted_names)

Output:

[1] "Jhala" "Raj"   "Singh" "Vipul"
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