Group Data in R for consecutive rows

Question

If there\'s not a quick 1-3 liner for this in R, I\'ll definitely just use linux sort and a short python program using groupby, so don\'t bend over

Answer 1

First we combine ID and weight. The quick-and-dirty way is using paste:

df_in$id_weight <- paste(df_in$id, df_in$weight, sep='_')
df_in
   ID weight start_day end_day id_weight
1   1    150         1       4     1_150
2   1    150         4       7     1_150
3   1    151         7      10     1_151
4   1    150        10      11     1_150
5   1    150        11      30     1_150
6   2    170         5      10     2_170
7   2    170        10      15     2_170
8   2    170        15      20     2_170
9   2    171        20      25     2_171
10  2    171        25      30     2_171

Safer way is to use interaction or group_indices: Combine values in 4 columns to a single unique value

We can group consecutively using rle.

rlel <- rle(df_in$id_weight)$lengths
df_in$group <- unlist(lapply(1:length(rlel), function(i) rep(i, rlel[i])))
df_in
   ID weight start_day end_day id_weight group
1   1    150         1       4     1_150     1
2   1    150         4       7     1_150     1
3   1    151         7      10     1_151     2
4   1    150        10      11     1_150     3
5   1    150        11      30     1_150     3
6   2    170         5      10     2_170     4
7   2    170        10      15     2_170     4
8   2    170        15      20     2_170     4
9   2    171        20      25     2_171     5
10  2    171        25      30     2_171     5

Now with the convenient group number we can summarize by group.

df_in %>% 
  group_by(group) %>% 
  summarize(id_weight = id_weight[1], 
            start_day = min(start_day), 
            end_day = max(end_day))
# A tibble: 5 x 4
  group id_weight start_day end_day
               
1     1 1_150             1       7
2     2 1_151             7      10
3     3 1_150            10      30
4     4 2_170             5      20
5     5 2_171            20      30