Reorder rows using custom order

Question

Given data:

library(data.table)
DT = data.table(category=LETTERS[1:3], b=1:3)
DT
#    category b
# 1:        A 1
# 2:        B 2
# 3:        C 3

Answer 1

First, create a vector with the letters in the desired order. Then match* the vector with the variable to be sorted. match returns indices of (first) matches, which can be plugged into slice:

library(dplyr)

# create a vector with letters in the desired order
x <- c("C", "A", "B")

DT %>%
  slice(match(x, category))
#   category b
# 1        C 3
# 2        A 1
# 3        B 2

Another way would be to convert "category" to a factor, set levels to the desired order, and use arrange:

DT %>%
  mutate(category =  factor(category, levels = x)) %>%
  arrange(category)    
#   category b
# 1        C 3
# 2        A 1
# 3        B 2

*The match method is inspired by this answer.