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I know there are tons of sorting questions on here, but I'm unable to resolve my use case.

I am trying to sort a list in R (on Ubuntu 16.04) and am at my wits end! I've been trying to mess with the LC_ALL=C and collate settings and can get results to sort differently, but I'm unable to get the result I need. This is what I need:

2014_Actual / 2014_Target / 2014_Percent / 2015_Actual / 2015_Target / 2015_Percent

The trick I use in windows is to delete the underscore, so: 2014_Actual / 2014_Target / 2014Percent / 2015_Actual / 2015_Target / 2015Percent, which is acceptable to my users. But obviously this doesn't work in Linux since it ignores the underscore.

Does anybody have any ideas on how I could get the above mentioned sort order at the LC_ALL level?

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: Adding clarity: the problem is that when I sort the above in Linux, it ignores the underscore and gives:
2014_Actual / 2014Percent / 2014_Target / 2015_Actual / 2015Percent / 2015_Target

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    this is within R, you're saying? – Jeff Schaller♦ Jun 5 '17 at 16:15
  • is: mv 2014_Target 2014_target; mv 2015_Target 2015_target acceptable? – Jeff Schaller♦ Jun 5 '17 at 16:18
  • If this is a question about how to write it in R, that's more suited to SO than to U&L, is it not? – DopeGhoti Jun 5 '17 at 16:24
  • Correct @JeffSchaller, it's within R... but the Linux sort environment comes through. – Amit Kohli Jun 5 '17 at 16:25
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    what are you doing in R to call out to the Linux environment? (and is renaming Target to target acceptable?) – Jeff Schaller♦ Jun 5 '17 at 16:43
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I’m not sure I understand the entirety of your question, but if I were doing that in Unix, I would do

sed -e 's/Actual/1Actual/' -e 's/Target/2Target/' -e 's/Percent/3Percent/' |
    sort |
    sed -e 's/1Actual/Actual/' -e 's/2Target/Target/' -e 's/3Percent/Percent/'
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  • GENIUS!!!!! RENAME SORT RENAME......... DUuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh omg I want to die – Amit Kohli Jun 5 '17 at 19:18

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