r - How to order a data frame by one descending and one ascending column?

Question

I have a data frame, which looks like that:

    P1  P2  P3  T1  T2  T3  I1  I2
1   2   3   5   52  43  61  6   "b"
2   6   4   3   72  NA  59  1   "a"
3   1   5   6   55  48  60  6   "f"
4   2   4   4   65  64  58  2   "b"

I want to sort it by I1 in descending order, and rows with the same value in I1 by I2 in ascending order, getting the rows in the order 1 3 4 2. But the order function seems to only take one decreasing argument, which is then TRUE or FALSE for all ordering vectors at once. How do I get my sort correct?

Answer 1

I used this code to produce your desired output. Is this what you were after?

rum <- read.table(textConnection("P1  P2  P3  T1  T2  T3  I1  I2
2   3   5   52  43  61  6   b
6   4   3   72  NA  59  1   a
1   5   6   55  48  60  6   f
2   4   4   65  64  58  2   b"), header = TRUE)
rum$I2 <- as.character(rum$I2)
rum[order(rum$I1, rev(rum$I2), decreasing = TRUE), ]

  P1 P2 P3 T1 T2 T3 I1 I2
1  2  3  5 52 43 61  6  b
3  1  5  6 55 48 60  6  f
4  2  4  4 65 64 58  2  b
2  6  4  3 72 NA 59  1  a