calculating sum of previous 3 rows in R data.table (by grid-square)

Question

I would like to calculate the rainfall that has fallen over the last three days for each grid square, and add this as a new column in my data.table. To be clear, I want to s

Answer 1

The rollapply solution would be done like this:

weather[, rain_3 := rollapplyr(rain, 3, sum, fill = NA_real_), by = square]

giving:

    rain square desired_result rain_3
 1:   NA      1             NA     NA
 2:   NA      1             NA     NA
 3:   NA      1             NA     NA
 4:    0      1             NA     NA
 5:    0      1             NA     NA
 6:    5      1              5      5
 7:    1      1              6      6
 8:    0      1              6      6
 9:    3      1              4      4
10:   10      2             NA     NA

Update

Have simplified based on version of zoo that came out since this question was originally asked.