xtfrm.Surv: Sorting order for Surv objects

Description

Sort survival objects into a partial order, which is the same one used internally for many of the calculations.

Usage

# S3 method for Surv
xtfrm(x)

Arguments

a Surv object

Value

a vector of integers which will have the same sort order as x.

Details

This creates a partial ordering of survival objects. The result is sorted in time order, for tied pairs of times right censored events come after observed events (censor after death), and left censored events are sorted before observed events. For counting process data (tstart, tstop, status) the ordering is by stop time, status, and start time, again with censoring last. Interval censored data is sorted using the midpoint of each interval.

The xtfrm routine is used internally by order and sort, so these results carry over to those routines.

Examples

Run this code

# NOT RUN {
test <- c(Surv(c(10, 9,9, 8,8,8,7,5,5,4), rep(1:0, 5)), Surv(6.2, NA))
test
sort(test)
# }