setkey: Create key on a data.table
In data.table: Extension of `data.frame`

setkey

R Documentation

Create key on a data.table

Description

setkey sorts a data.table and marks it as sorted with an attribute "sorted". The sorted columns are the key. The key can be any number of columns. The data is always sorted in ascending order with NAs (if any) always first. The table is changed by reference and there is no memory used for the key (other than marking which columns the data is sorted by).

There are three reasons setkey is desirable:

binary search and joins are faster when they detect they can use an existing key
grouping by a leading subset of the key columns is faster because the groups are already gathered contiguously in RAM
simpler shorter syntax; e.g. DT["id",] finds the group "id" in the first column of DT's key using binary search. It may be helpful to think of a key as super-charged rownames: multi-column and multi-type.

NAs are always first because:

NA is internally INT_MIN (a large negative number) in R. Keys and indexes are always in increasing order so if NAs are first, no special treatment or branch is needed in many data.table internals involving binary search. It is not optional to place NAs last for speed, simplicity and robustness of internals at C level.
if any NAs are present then we believe it is better to display them up front (rather than hiding them at the end) to reduce the risk of not realizing NAs are present.

In data.table parlance, all set* functions change their input by reference. That is, no copy is made at all other than for temporary working memory, which is as large as one column. The only other data.table operator that modifies input by reference is :=. Check out the See Also section below for other set* functions data.table provides.

setindex creates an index for the provided columns. This index is simply an ordering vector of the dataset's rows according to the provided columns. This order vector is stored as an attribute of the data.table and the dataset retains the original order of rows in memory. See the vignette("datatable-secondary-indices-and-auto-indexing") for more details.

key returns the data.table's key if it exists; NULL if none exists.

haskey returns TRUE/FALSE if the data.table has a key.

Usage

setkey(x, ..., verbose=getOption("datatable.verbose"), physical = TRUE)
setkeyv(x, cols, verbose=getOption("datatable.verbose"), physical = TRUE)
setindex(...)
setindexv(x, cols, verbose=getOption("datatable.verbose"))
key(x)
indices(x, vectors = FALSE)
haskey(x)

Arguments

`x`	A `data.table`.
`...`	The columns to sort by. Do not quote the column names. If `...` is missing (i.e. `setkey(DT)`), all the columns are used. `NULL` removes the key.
`cols`	A character vector of column names. For `setindexv`, this can be a `list` of character vectors, in which case each element will be applied as an index in turn.
`verbose`	Output status and information.
`physical`	`TRUE` changes the order of the data in RAM. `FALSE` adds an index.
`vectors`	`logical` scalar, default `FALSE`; when set to `TRUE`, a `list` of character vectors is returned, each referring to one index.

Details

setkey reorders (i.e. sorts) the rows of a data.table by the columns provided. The sort method used has developed over the years and we have contributed to base R too; see sort. Generally speaking we avoid any type of comparison sort (other than insert sort for very small input) preferring instead counting sort and forwards radix. We also avoid hash tables.

Note that setkey always uses "C-locale"; see the Details in the help for setorder for more on why.

The sort is stable; i.e., the order of ties (if any) is preserved.

For character vectors, data.table takes advantage of R's internal global string cache, also exported as chorder.

Value

The input is modified by reference and returned (invisibly) so it can be used in compound statements; e.g., setkey(DT,a)[.("foo")]. If you require a copy, take a copy first (using DT2=copy(DT)). copy may also sometimes be useful before := is used to subassign to a column by reference.

Good practice

In general, it's good practice to use column names rather than numbers. This is why setkey and setkeyv only accept column names. If you use column numbers then bugs (possibly silent) can more easily creep into your code as time progresses if changes are made elsewhere in your code; e.g., if you add, remove or reorder columns in a few months time, a setkey by column number will then refer to a different column, possibly returning incorrect results with no warning. (A similar concept exists in SQL, where "select * from ..." is considered poor programming style when a robust, maintainable system is required.)

If you really wish to use column numbers, it is possible but deliberately a little harder; e.g., setkeyv(DT,names(DT)[1:2]).

If you want to subset rows based on values of an integer key column, it should be done with the dot (.) syntax, because integers are otherwise interpreted as row numbers (see example).

If you wanted to use grep to select key columns according to a pattern, note that you can just set value = TRUE to return a character vector instead of the default integer indices.

References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radix_sort
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting_sort
http://stereopsis.com/radix.html
https://codercorner.com/RadixSortRevisited.htm
https://cran.r-project.org/package=bit64
https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/wiki/Presentations

Examples

# Type 'example(setkey)' to run these at the prompt and browse output

DT = data.table(A=5:1,B=letters[5:1])
DT # before
setkey(DT,B)          # re-orders table and marks it sorted.
DT # after
tables()              # KEY column reports the key'd columns
key(DT)
keycols = c("A","B")
setkeyv(DT,keycols)

DT = data.table(A=5:1,B=letters[5:1])
DT2 = DT              # does not copy
setkey(DT2,B)         # does not copy-on-write to DT2
identical(DT,DT2)     # TRUE. DT and DT2 are two names for the same keyed table

DT = data.table(A=5:1,B=letters[5:1])
DT2 = copy(DT)        # explicit copy() needed to copy a data.table
setkey(DT2,B)         # now just changes DT2
identical(DT,DT2)     # FALSE. DT and DT2 are now different tables

DT = data.table(A=5:1,B=letters[5:1])
setindex(DT)          # set indices
setindex(DT, A)
setindex(DT, B)
indices(DT)           # get indices single vector
indices(DT, vectors = TRUE) # get indices list

# Setting multiple indices at once
DT = data.table(A = 5:1, B = letters[5:1], C = 10:6)
setindexv(DT, list(c("A", "B"), c("B", "C")))
print(DT, show.indices=TRUE)

# Use the dot .(subset_value) syntax with integer keys:
DT = data.table(id = 2:1)
setkey(DT, id)
subset_value <- 1
DT[subset_value]  # treats subset_value as an row number
DT[.(subset_value)]  # matches subset_value against key column (id)

data.table documentation built on Aug. 8, 2025, 6:20 p.m.