Add index numbers when converting sorted table to dataframe - r

Question

I have a vector of strings that I'm trying to convert into a data frame with a frequency column. So far so good, but when I dim my data frame, I get only one column instead of two. I guess R is using the words as the index values.
Anyway here is how it starts. My list:
a<-c("welcoming", "whatsyourexcuse", "whiteway", "zero", "yay", "whatsyourexcuse", "yay")
Then, I tried to sort the frequency values in decreasing order and store as data frame using:
df <- as.data.frame(sort(table(a), decreasing=TRUE))
Problem is when I dim(df) I get [1] 5 1 instead of [1] 5 2. Here is what df looks like:
sort(table(a), decreasing = TRUE)
whatsyourexcuse 2
yay 2
welcoming 1
whiteway 1
zero 1
instead of:
a Freq
[1] whatsyourexcuse 2
[2] yay 2
[3] welcoming 1
[4] whiteway 1
[5] zero 1
Any pointers please? Thanks.

Answer 1

Try:
library(plyr)
a1 <- count(a)
a1[order(-a1$freq),]
# x freq
# 2 whatsyourexcuse 2
# 4 yay 2
# 1 welcoming 1
# 3 whiteway 1
# 5 zero 1
dim(a1)
#[1] 5 2
Or
a2 <- stack(sort(table(a),decreasing=TRUE))[,2:1]
dim(a2)
#[1] 5 2
When you are converting to data.frame using as.data.frame(sort(table(a), decreasing=TRUE)), the names of the elements become the rownames of the dataframe, so you are creating only one column instead of two. When you do sort, it no longer is the table object. For comparison check str(table(a)) and str(sort(table(a), decreasing=TRUE)))
You can also create the data.frame by
tbl <- sort(table(a), decreasing=TRUE)
data.frame(col1= names(tbl), Values= as.vector(tbl))