“smoothing” time data - can it be done more efficient?

Question

I have a data frame containing an ID, a start date and an end date. My data is ordered by ID, start, end (in this sequence).

Now I want all rows with the same ID hav

Answer 1

I did it slightly different to avoid deleting empty rows in the end:

smoothingEpisodes <- function (theData) {
    curId <- theData[1, "ID"]
    curStart <- theData[1, "START"]
    curEnd <- theData[1, "END"]

    theLength <- nrow(theData)

    out.1 <- integer(length = theLength)
    out.2 <- out.3 <- numeric(length = theLength)

    j <- 1

    for(i in 2:nrow(theData)) {
        nextId <- theData[i, "ID"]
        nextStart <- theData[i, "START"]
        nextEnd <- theData[i, "END"]

        if (curId != nextId | (curEnd + 1) < nextStart) {
            out.1[j] <- curId
            out.2[j] <- curStart
            out.3[j] <- curEnd

            j <- j + 1

            curId <- nextId
            curStart <- nextStart
            curEnd <- nextEnd
        } else {
            curEnd <- max(curEnd, nextEnd, na.rm = TRUE)
        }
    }

    out.1[j] <- curId
    out.2[j] <- curStart
    out.3[j] <- curEnd

    theOutput <- data.frame(ID = out.1[1:j], START = as.Date(out.2[1:j], origin = "1970-01-01"), END = as.Date(out.3[1:j], origin = "1970-01-01"))

    theOutput
}

quite a big improvement to my original version!