Skip to content

Inconsistent copy behavior when subsetting #2254

Description

@renkun-ken

When we subset a data.table, it is supposed to copy the resulted columns. However, it seems that whether they are copied depends on the number of rows of the original data.table. Here's an example:

library(data.table)
d1 <- data.table(x = c(0, 1), y = c(1, 0))
d2 <- d1[x >= 0]
d1[, address(x)]
d2[, address(x)]

m1 <- data.table(x = 0, y = 1)
m2 <- m1[x >= 0]
m1[, address(x)]
m2[, address(x)]

The following are the results produced on my machine:

> library(data.table)
data.table 1.10.4
  The fastest way to learn (by data.table authors): https://www.datacamp.com/courses/data-analysis-the-data-table-way
  Documentation: ?data.table, example(data.table) and browseVignettes("data.table")
  Release notes, videos and slides: http://r-datatable.com
> d1 <- data.table(x = c(0, 1), y = c(1, 0))
> d2 <- d1[x >= 0]
> d1[, address(x)]
[1] "0x356b878"
> d2[, address(x)] # copied!
[1] "0x31fbf08"
> m1 <- data.table(x = 0, y = 1)
> m2 <- m1[x >= 0]
> m1[, address(x)]
[1] "0x4331ab8"
> m2[, address(x)] # not copied!
[1] "0x4331ab8"

It looks like dt[TRUE], dt[1L] and dt[cond] are not always consistent in terms of copy behavior even when the results are the same.

My session info:

R version 3.4.1 (2017-06-30)
Platform: x86_64-pc-linux-gnu (64-bit)
Running under: Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS

Matrix products: default
BLAS: /usr/lib/openblas-base/libblas.so.3
LAPACK: /usr/lib/libopenblasp-r0.2.18.so

locale:
 [1] LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NUMERIC=C               LC_TIME=en_US.UTF-8        LC_COLLATE=en_US.UTF-8     LC_MONETARY=en_US.UTF-8    LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8   
 [7] LC_PAPER=en_US.UTF-8       LC_NAME=C                  LC_ADDRESS=C               LC_TELEPHONE=C             LC_MEASUREMENT=en_US.UTF-8 LC_IDENTIFICATION=C       

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] data.table_1.10.4

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] compiler_3.4.1 tools_3.4.1    yaml_2.1.14   

Activity

  1. added this to the 1.12.0 milestone on Dec 14, 2018
  2. modified the milestones: 1.12.0, 1.12.2 on Jan 6, 2019
  3. removed this from the 1.12.2 milestone on Feb 26, 2019
  4. added this to the 2.0.0 milestone on Jan 7, 2024
Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment

Metadata

Metadata

Assignees

No one assigned

    Type

    No type

    Projects

    No projects

      Relationships

      None yet

      Development

      No branches or pull requests

      Issue actions