How to get ranks with no gaps when there are ties among values?

Question

When there are ties in the original data, is there a way to create a ranking without gaps in the ranks (consecutive, integer rank values)? Suppose:

x <-           


        

Answer 1

Another function that does this, but it seems inefficient. There is no for loop, but I doubt it is more efficient than Sacha's suggestion!

x=c(1,1,2,3,4,5,8,8)
fancy.rank <- function(x) {
    x.unique <- unique(x)
    d1 <- data.frame(x=x)
    d2 <- data.frame(x=x.unique, rank(x.unique))
    merge(d1, d2, by="x")[,2]
}

fancy.rank(x)

[1] 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 6