Complexe non-equi merge in R

Question

I\'m trying to do a complexe non-equi join between two tables. I got inspired by a presentation in the last useR2016 (https://channel9.msdn.com/events/useR-international-R-

Answer 1

So I was very close. I had 2 problems, first a bad installation of the data.table package (Data table error could not find function ".") caused an obscure error.

After having fixed that, I got closer an found that :

dt1[dt2, on=.(sp=sp, dbh>=dbh_min, dbh<=dbh_max), nomatch=0]

gave me what I wanted with a bad dbh column. Inverting the command with:

dt2[dt1, on=.(sp=sp, dbh_min<=dbh, dbh_max>=dbh)]

fixed the problem with only one useless extra column.