Subsetting data.table by 2nd column only of a 2 column key, using binary search not vector scan

Question

I recently discovered binary search in data.table. If the table is sorted on multiple keys it possible to search on the 2nd key only ?

DT = dat         


        

Answer 1

Based on this email thread I wrote the following functions:

create_index = function(dt, ..., verbose = getOption("datatable.verbose")) {
  cols = data.table:::getdots()
  res = dt[, cols, with=FALSE]
  res[, i:=1:nrow(dt)]
  setkeyv(res, cols, verbose = verbose)
}

JI = function(index, ...) {
  index[J(...),i]$i
}

Here are the results on my system with a larger DT (1e8 rows):

> system.time(DT[J("c")])
   user  system elapsed 
  0.168   0.136   0.306 

> system.time(DT[J(unique(x), 25)])
   user  system elapsed 
  2.472   1.508   3.980 
> system.time(DT[y==25])
   user  system elapsed 
  4.532   2.149   6.674 

> system.time(IDX_y <- create_index(DT, y))
   user  system elapsed 
  3.076   2.428   5.503 
> system.time(DT[JI(IDX_y, 25)])
   user  system elapsed 
  0.512   0.320   0.831     

If you are using the index multiple times it is worth it.