R, dplyr: cumulative version of n_distinct

Question

I have a dataframe as follows. It is ordered by column time.

Input -

df = data.frame(time = 1:20,
            grp = sort(rep(1:5,4)),
             


        

Answer 1

Try:

Update

With your new dataset, an approach in base R

  df$var2 <-  unlist(lapply(split(df, df$grp),
              function(x) {x$var2 <-0
               indx <- match(unique(x$var1), x$var1)
               x$var2[indx] <- 1
               cumsum(x$var2) }))

  head(df,7)
  #   time grp var1 var2
  # 1    1   1    A    1
  # 2    2   1    B    2
  # 3    3   1    A    2
  # 4    4   1    B    2
  # 5    5   2    A    1
  # 6    6   2    B    2
  # 7    7   2    A    2