accessing return variables from a function

On Jul 9, 2010, at 5:20 AM, Noah Silverman wrote:

Hi,

I am trying to figure out a "short" way to access two values output from
the sort function.

x <- c(3,4,3,6,78,3,1,2)
sort(x, index.return=T)

$x
[1]  1  2  3  3  3  4  6 78

$ix
[1] 7 8 1 3 6 2 4 5


It would be great to do something like this (doesn't work.):

yoursort <- function(x) {sx <- sort(x, index.return=T); return(

c(sx$x, sx$ix) )}

yoursort(x)

 [1]  1  2  3  3  3  4  6 78  7  8  1  3  6  2  4  5

c(y, indexes) <- sort(x, index.return=T)

But that doesn't work.

I CAN grab the output of sort in a variable and then access it twice to
get the values, but that seems wasteful.

Any  ideas?

David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT