Sorting dataframe with 1 column in R

I have a df of names which has 1 column. I have tried multiple iterations of order() and have also converted it to a list and tried sort in a few different ways, with no luck.

Below is dput() for reference:

> dput(names.ordered)
structure(list(Directors = c("Darabont, Frank", "Nolan, Christopher", 
"Lumet, Sidney", "Spielberg, Steven", "Jackson, Peter", "Tarantino, Quentin", 
"Leone, Sergio", "Fincher, David", "Zemeckis, Robert", "Kershner, Irvin", 
"Wachowski, Lana", "Scorsese, Martin", "Forman, Milos", "Kurosawa, Akira", 
"Demme, Jonathan", "Meirelles, Fernando", "Benigni, Roberto", 
"Capra, Frank", "Lucas, George", "Miyazaki, Hayao", "Besson, Luc", 
"Kobayashi, Masaki", "Polanski, Roman", "Cameron, James", "Singer, Bryan", 
"Hitchcock, Alfred", "Allers, Roger", "Chaplin, Charles", "Kaye, Tony", 
"Takahata, Isao", "Chazelle, Damien", "Scott, Ridley", "Nakache, Olivier", 
"Curtiz, Michael", "Tornatore, Giuseppe", "Kubrick, Stanley", 
"Wilder, Billy", "Stanton, Andrew", "Russo, Anthony", "Persichetti, Bob", 
"Chan-Wook, Park", "Phillips, Todd", "Shinkai, Makoto", "Unkrich, Lee", 
"Labaki, Nadine", "Petersen, Wolfgang", "Hirani, Rajkumar", "Lasseter, John", 
"Mendes, Sam", "Gibson, Mel", "Kail, Thomas", "Marquand, Richard", 
"Klimov, Elem", "Lang, Fritz", "Khan, Aamir", "Welles, Orson", 
"Vinterberg, Thomas", "Aronofsky, Darren", "Donen, Stanley", 
"Gondry, Michel", "Lean, David", "Tiwari, Nitesh", "Villeneuve, Denis", 
"Zeller, Florian", "Farhadi, Asghar", "Ray, Satyajit", "Ritchie, Guy", 
"Jeunet, Jean-Pierre", "Mulligan, Robert", "Docter, Pete", "Mann, Michael", 
"Hanson, Curtis", "McTiernan, John", "Gnanavel, T.J.", "Farrelly, Peter", 
"Hirschbiegel, Oliver", "Gilliam, Terry", "Eastwood, Clint", 
"Majidi, Majid", "Kramer, Stanley", "Sturges, John", "Huston, John", 
"Howard, Ron", "Coen, Ethan", "Carpenter, John", "Bergman, Ingmar", 
"McDonagh, Martin", "Pablos, Sergio", "Lynch, David", "Weir, Peter", 
"Reed, Carol", "McTeigue, James", "Boyle, Danny", "Coen, Joel", 
"O'Connor, Gavin", "Fleming, Victor", "Ozu, Yasujirô", "Kazan, Elia", 
"Irmak, Cagan", "Szifron, Damián", "Tarkovsky, Andrei", "Cimino, Michael", 
"Costa-Gavras, Costa-Gavras,", "Anderson, Wes", "Keaton, Buster", 
"Bruckman, Clyde", "Linklater, Richard", "Elliot, Adam", "Sheridan, Jim", 
"Abrahamson, Lenny", "Raghavan, Sriram", "Mangold, James", "McQueen, Steve", 
"Lubitsch, Ernst", "DeBlois, Dean", "Miller, George", "Wyler, William", 
"Yates, David", "Clouzot, Henri-Georges", "Reiner, Rob", "Kashyap, Anurag", 
"Rosenberg, Stuart", "Hallström, Lasse", "Kassovitz, Mathieu", 
"Truffaut, François", "Yamada, Naoko", "Stone, Oliver", "McCarthy, Tom", 
"Jones, Terry", "George, Terry", "Turgul, Yavuz", "Wong, Kar-Wai", 
"Penn, Sean", "Anno, Hideaki", "Pontecorvo, Gillo", "Fellini, Federico", 
"Wenders, Wim", "Kieslowski, Krzysztof", "Kumar, Ram", "Coppola, Francis Ford", 
"Joon Ho, Bong", "von Donnersmarck, Florian Henckel", "Van Sant, Gus", 
"De Sica, Vittorio", "Hill, George Roy", "De Palma, Brian", "Mankiewicz, Joseph L.", 
"Anderson, Paul Thomas", "del Toro, Guillermo", "Campanella, Juan José", 
"Shyamalan, M. Night", "Dreyer, Carl Theodor", "Avildsen, John G.", 
"Iñárritu, Alejandro G.")), row.names = c(NA, -154L), class = "data.frame")

A couple things I’ve already tried which returned errors or no results:

> names.ordered <- names.ordered[order(names.ordered$Directors)]
Error in `[.data.frame`(names.ordered, order(names.ordered$Directors)) : 
  undefined columns selected

> names.ordered <- names.ordered[order(1)] 

#after converting to list
> names.ordered <- sort(names.ordered)
Error in sort.int(x, na.last = na.last, decreasing = decreasing, ...) : 
  'x' must be atomic

>Solution :

You need to specify which column is to be ordered/sorted even if the data frame contains only one column.

If you want to preserve the original order of names.ordered use order to create an index:

idx <- order(names.ordered$Director)
head(names.ordered)
           Directors
1    Darabont, Frank
2 Nolan, Christopher
3      Lumet, Sidney
4  Spielberg, Steven
5     Jackson, Peter
6 Tarantino, Quentin
head(names.ordered[idx, ])
# [1] "Abrahamson, Lenny"     "Allers, Roger"         "Anderson, Paul Thomas" "Anderson, Wes"         "Anno, Hideaki"         "Aronofsky, Darren" 

If you want to re-arrange the order of names.ordered use sort():

names.ordered$Directors <- sort(names.ordered$Directors)
head(names.ordered$Directors)
# [1] "Abrahamson, Lenny"     "Allers, Roger"         "Anderson, Paul Thomas" "Anderson, Wes"         "Anno, Hideaki"         "Aronofsky, Darren"    
tail(names.ordered$Directors)
# [1] "Wong, Kar-Wai"    "Wyler, William"   "Yamada, Naoko"    "Yates, David"     "Zeller, Florian"  "Zemeckis, Robert"