Sort columns of a dataframe by column name

Question

This is possibly a simple question, but I do not know how to order columns alphabetically.

test = data.frame(C = c(0, 2, 4, 7, 8), A = c(4, 2, 4, 7, 8), B =          


        

Answer 1

So to have a specific column come first, then the rest alphabetically, I'd propose this solution:

test[, c("myFirstColumn", sort(setdiff(names(test), "myFirstColumn")))]

Answer 2

Here's the obligatory dplyr answer in case somebody wants to do this with the pipe.

test %>% 
    select(sort(names(.)))

Answer 3

If you only want one or more columns in the front and don't care about the order of the rest:

require(dplyr)
test %>%
  select(B, everything())