Update subset of data.table based on join

Question

I have two data tables, DT1 and DT2:

set.seed(1)
DT1<-data.table(id1=rep(1:3,2),id2=sample(letters,6), v1=rnorm(6), key=\"id2\")
DT1
##    id1 id2                 


        

Answer 1

The easiest way I can think of is to key by id1 as well. eg

setkey(DT1, id2,id1)
DT2[, id1 := 3]
setkey(DT2, id2, id1)

# use i.v1 to reference v1 from the i component
DT1[DT2, v1 := i.v1 ]


DT1
   id1 id2        v1
1:   2   e 0.7383247
2:   1   g 1.5952808
3:   2   j 0.3295078
4:   3   n 0.0000000
5:   3   s 0.5757814
6:   1   u 0.4874291