lag: Lagged operations.

In cheapr: Simple Functions to Save Time and Memory

Lagged operations.

Description

Fast lags and leads optionally using dynamic vectorised lags, ordering and run lengths.

Usage

lag_(x, n = 1L, fill = NULL, set = FALSE, recursive = TRUE)

lag2_(
  x,
  n = 1L,
  order = NULL,
  run_lengths = NULL,
  fill = NULL,
  recursive = TRUE
)

Arguments

x	A vector or data frame.
n	Number of lags. Negative values are accepted. lag2_ accepts a vector of dynamic lags and leads which gets recycled to the length of x.
fill	Value used to fill first n values. Default is NA.
set	Should x be updated by reference? If TRUE no copy is made and x is updated in place. The default is FALSE.
recursive	Should list elements be lagged as well? If TRUE, this is useful for data frames and will return row lags. If FALSE this will return a plain lagged list.
order	Optionally specify an ordering with which to apply the lags. This is useful for example when applying lags chronologically using an unsorted time variable.
run_lengths	Optional integer vector of run lengths that defines the size of each lag run. For example, supplying c(5, 5) applies lags to the first 5 elements and then essentially resets the bounds and applies lags to the next 5 elements as if they were an entirely separate and standalone vector. This is particularly useful in conjunction with the order argument to perform a by-group lag. See the examples for details.

Details

For most applications, it is more efficient and recommended to use lag_(). For anything that requires dynamic lags, lag by order of another variable, or by-group lags, one can use lag2_().
To do cyclic lags, see the examples below for an implementation.

lag2_

lag2_ is a generalised form of lag_ that by default performs simple lags and leads.
It has 3 additional features but does not support updating by reference or long vectors.

These extra features include:

• n - This shares the same name as the n argument in lag_ for consistency. The difference is that lag_ accepts a lag vector of length 1 whereas this accepts a vector of dynamic lags allowing for flexible combinations of variable sized lags and leads. These are recycled to the length of the data and will always align with the data, meaning that if you supply a custom order argument, this ordering is applied both to x and the recycled lag vector n simultaneously.

• order - Apply lags in any order you wish. This can be useful for reverse order lags, lags against unsorted time variables, and by-group lags.

• run_lengths - Specify the size of individual lag runs. For example, if you specify run_lengths = c(3, 4, 2), this will apply your lags to the first 3 elements and then reset, applying lags to the next 4 elements, to reset again and apply lags to the final 2 elements. Each time the reset occurs, it treats each run length sized 'chunk' as a unique and separate vector. See the examples for a showcase.

Table of differences between lag_ and lag2_

Description	lag_	lag2_
Lags	Yes	Yes
Leads	Yes	Yes
Long vector support	Yes	No
Lag by reference	Yes	No
Dynamic vectorised lags	No	Yes
Data frame row lags	Yes	Yes
Alternative order lags	No	Yes

Value

A lagged object the same size as x.

Examples

library(cheapr)
library(bench)

# A use-case for data.table
# Adding 0 because can't update ALTREP by reference
df <- data.frame(x = 1:10^5 + 0L)

# Normal data frame lag
sset(lag_(df), 1:10)

# Lag these behind by 3 rows
sset(lag_(df, 3, set = TRUE), 1:10)

df$x[1:10] # x variable was updated by reference!

# The above can be used naturally in data.table to lag data
# without any copies

# To perform regular R row lags, just make sure set is `FALSE`

sset(lag_(as.data.frame(EuStockMarkets), 5), 1:10)

# lag2_ is a generalised version of lag_ that allows
# for much more complex lags

x <- 1:10

# lag every 2nd element
lag2_(x, n = c(1, 0)) # lag vector is recycled

# Explicit Lag(3) using a vector of lags
lags <- lag_sequence(length(x), 3, partial = FALSE)
lag2_(x, n = lags)

# Alternating lags and leads
lag2_(x, c(1, -1))

# Lag only the 3rd element
lags <- integer(length(x))
lags[3] <- 1L
lag2_(x, lags)

# lag in descending order (same as a lead)

lag2_(x, order = 10:1)

# lag that resets after index 5
lag2_(x, run_lengths = c(5, 5))

# lag with a time index
years <- sample(2011:2020)
lag2_(x, order = order(years))

# Example of how to do a cyclical lag
n <- length(x)

# When k >= 0
k <- min(3, n)
lag2_(x, c(rep(-n + k, k), rep(k, n - k)))
# When k < 0
k <- max(-3, -n)
lag2_(x, c(rep(k, n + k), rep(n + k, -k)))

# As it turns out, we can do a grouped lag
# by supplying group sizes as run lengths and group order as the order

set.seed(45)
g <- sample(c("a", "b"), 10, TRUE)

# NOTE: collapse::flag will not work unless g is already sorted!
# This is not an issue with lag2_()
collapse::flag(x, g = g)
lag2_(x, order = order(g), run_lengths = collapse::GRP(g)$group.sizes)

# For production code, we can of course make
# this more optimised by using collapse::radixorderv()
# Which calculates the order and group sizes all at once

o <- collapse::radixorderv(g, group.sizes = TRUE)
lag2_(x, order = o, run_lengths = attr(o, "group.sizes"))

# Let's finally wrap this up in a nice grouped-lag function

grouped_lag <- function(x, n = 1, g = integer(length(x))){
  o <- collapse::radixorderv(g, group.sizes = TRUE, sort = FALSE)
  lag2_(x, n, order = o, run_lengths = attr(o, "group.sizes"))
}

# And voila!
grouped_lag(x, g = g)

# A method to extract this information from dplyr

## We can actually get this information easily from a `grouped_df` object
## Uncomment the below code to run the implementation
# library(dplyr)
# library(timeplyr)
# eu_stock <- EuStockMarkets |>
#   ts_as_tibble() |>
#   group_by(stock_index = group)
# groups <- group_data(eu_stock) # Group information
# group_order <- unlist(groups$.rows) # Order of groups
# group_sizes <- lengths_(groups$.rows) # Group sizes
#
# # by-stock index lag
# lag2_(eu_stock$value, order = group_order, run_lengths = group_sizes)
#
# # Verifying this output is correct
# eu_stock |>
#   ungroup() |>
#   mutate(lag1 = lag_(value), .by = stock_index) |>
#   mutate(lag2 = lag2_(value, order = group_order, run_lengths = group_sizes)) |>
#   summarise(lags_are_equal = identical(lag1, lag2))

# Let's compare this to data.table

library(data.table)
default_threads <- getDTthreads()
setDTthreads(1)
dt <- data.table(x = 1:10^5,
                 g = sample.int(10^4, 10^5, TRUE))

bench::mark(dt[, y := shift(x), by = g][][["y"]],
            grouped_lag(dt$x, g = dt$g),
            iterations = 10)
setDTthreads(default_threads)

cheapr documentation built on June 8, 2025, 11:35 a.m.