How to implement guide with merging two data frames in r while preserving row order
I'm prototyping a solution and Hey everyone, I'm running into an issue that's driving me crazy... I tried several approaches but none seem to work. I'm working on a personal project and I'm trying to merge two data frames in R using `dplyr::left_join()`, but I'm running into an scenario where the order of the rows in the resulting data frame doesn't match the order of rows in the first data frame. I've made sure to set the `by` argument correctly, but the output seems to rearrange the rows unexpectedly. Here's a simplified version of what I'm working with: ```r library(dplyr) # Create first data frame first_df <- data.frame(id = c(1, 2, 3, 4), value = c('A', 'B', 'C', 'D')) # Create second data frame with mismatched order second_df <- data.frame(id = c(3, 1, 4, 2), description = c('Desc3', 'Desc1', 'Desc4', 'Desc2')) # Merge the data frames result <- left_join(first_df, second_df, by = 'id') print(result) ``` The expected output would be: ``` id value description 1 1 A Desc1 2 2 B Desc2 3 3 C Desc3 4 4 D Desc4 ``` However, the actual output is: ``` id value description 1 1 A Desc1 2 3 C Desc3 3 4 D Desc4 4 2 B Desc2 ``` I've attempted to use `arrange(first_df, id)` before the merge, but that didn't resolve the scenario. I also looked into using the `match()` function to reorder, but that feels cumbersome. Is there a straightforward way to perform this merge while preserving the original order of `first_df`? Any insights would be appreciated! I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. This is part of a larger CLI tool I'm building. How would you solve this? I'm working on a application that needs to handle this. Am I missing something obvious? I'm on Windows 10 using the latest version of R. Could someone point me to the right documentation? What are your experiences with this?