Pass a vector of variable names to arrange() in dplyr

Hadley hasn't made this obvious in the help file--only in his NSE vignette. The versions of the functions followed by underscores use standard evaluation, so you pass them vectors of strings and the like.

If I understand your problem correctly, you can just replace arrange() with arrange_() and it will work.

Specifically, pass the vector of strings as the .dots argument when you do it.

> df %>% arrange_(.dots=c("var1","var3"))
   var1 var2 var3 var4
1     1    i    5    i
2     1    x    7    w
3     1    h    8    e
4     2    b    5    f
5     2    t    5    b
6     2    w    7    h
7     3    s    6    d
8     3    f    8    e
9     4    c    5    y
10    4    o    8    c

========== Update March 2018 ==============

Using the standard evaluation versions in dplyr as I have shown here is now considered deprecated. You can read Hadley's programming vignette for the new way. Basically you will use !! to unquote one variable or !!! to unquote a vector of variables inside of arrange().

When you pass those columns, if they are bare, quote them using quo() for one variable or quos() for a vector. Don't use quotation marks. See the answer by Akrun.

If your columns are already strings, then make them names using rlang::sym() for a single column or rlang::syms() for a vector. See the answer by Christos. You can also use as.name() for a single column. Unfortunately as of this writing, the information on how to use rlang::sym() has not yet made it into the vignette I link to above (eventually it will be in the section on "variadic quasiquotation" according to his draft).

In the quosures spirit:

df %>% arrange(!!! rlang::syms(c("var1", "var3")))

For single variable, it would look like:

df %>% arrange(!! rlang::sym(c("var1")))

In the new version (soon to be released 0.6.0 of dplyr) we can make use of the quosures

library(dplyr)
vector_of_vars <- quos(var1, var3)
df %>%
    arrange(!!! vector_of_vars)
#   var1 var2 var3 var4
#1     1    i    5    i
#2     1    x    7    w
#3     1    h    8    e
#4     2    b    5    f
#5     2    t    5    b
#6     2    w    7    h
#7     3    s    6    d
#8     3    f    8    e
#9     4    c    5    y
#10    4    o    8    c

When there are more than one variable, we use quos and for a single variable it is quo. The quos will return a list of quoted variables and inside arrange, we unquote the list using !!! for evaluation