Sorting factors

Hello all:

I'm sorry to take up bandwidth with easy questions, but as an R
beginner, I continue to be surprised by factors.  If someone can shed
some light for me, I'd be grateful:

d

Total z02801 z02802 z02804 z02806 z02807 z02808 z02809 z02812 z02813 
 54813     29     51    169   2368    103     76   1328    112    501 
507 Levels: 0 10 1001 1004 1008 1016 1027 1028 103 1031 10318 1043 1045 ... Na

sort(d)

z02807 z02812 z02809 z02804 z02806 z02801 z02813 z02802  Total z02808 
   103    112   1328    169   2368     29    501     51  54813     76 
507 Levels: 0 10 1001 1004 1008 1016 1027 1028 103 1031 10318 1043 1045 ... Na

Apparently this factor is sorted in alphabetic order, not numeric order.
I find no parameter of sort() that controls for this.

And yet:

mode(d)

[1] "numeric"

length(d)

[1] 10

I would have thought that because d is a numeric list of ten values, I'd
get them sorted in numeric order.

Can someone help me understand why this is expected behavior, and also
what I should do in order to see the numerically sorted list of values I
really want?

Many thanks,

 -tom

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 tomfool at as220 dot org
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