Sorting a key,value list in R by value

You can try order

m[order(-unlist(m))]
#$ryan
#[1] 4

#$bob
#[1] 3

#$dan
#[1] 1

Or a slightly more efficient option would be to use decreasing=TRUE argument of order (from @nicola's comments)

m[order(unlist(m), decreasing=TRUE)]