Creating a data.table from C++
This article is originally published at https://gallery.rcpp.org
Introduction
Rcpp provides the DataFrame class which enables us to pass data.frame object between C++ and
R. DataFrame objects are key to R and used very widely. They also provide the basis from which
two key packages extend them. One of these, the tibble package, operates in a similar fashion to
data.frame and treats the data as immutable. Upon a change to the data, a new version is created
internally—this is frequently referred to as “copy-on-write”. Immutable data structures have some
desirable properties in terms of reasoning with and about data, but the copying comes at a price in
terms of performance especially once data becomes sizeable.
The other package, data.table, offers a contrasting approach. It generally modifies the data
in-place; this is often referred to as by reference. As (generally) no copies of the data are
needed, the runtime is often reduced. This design difference is (along with a lot of attention to
performance and optimisations in general) one of the reasons why data.table is so looking rather
attractive in benchmarks.
As objects of type data.table also inherit from data.frame, we can use all data.frame
functions on a data.table. Internally, however, the two are very different. The question now is,
how can we create a data.table efficiently inside of Rcpp without the need for a deep copy of
the data?
This question is important if the data generation process takes place in C++, e.g. when parsing,
simulating, or otherwise generating data. One example for which question came up is the
RITCH package which parses (large) binary ITCH files (financial
messages) in Rcpp and needs a fast data conversion to data.table.
Very Short Answer
We first provide a very short answer, mostly for future reference. A more detailed answer is provided below.
Essentially two steps have to be taken:
- set the S3 class of the object to
"data.table", "data.frame"inRcpp
Rcpp::List create_data_table() {
Rcpp::List res;
// Populate the list
// ...
res.attr("class") = Rcpp::CharacterVector::create("data.table", "data.frame");
return res;
}- in R call the
data.table::setalloccol(df)function on the “partial”data.table
foo <- function() {
dt <- create_data_table()
dt <- data.table::setalloccol(dt)
return(dt)
}A look inside the data.table::setalloccol() functions shows that it itself calls only a few
data.table functions needed to do some housekeeping and optimisation on internal state. It would
be useful to access these functions directly from another package at the C level, and we plan to
discuss this with the data.table team.
Detailed Answer
A first thought would be to use the Rcpp::DataFrame or the Rcpp::List class in Rcpp to return
the data to R and then call data.table::setDT() on the object to properly convert it to a
data.table. To give an example, lets consider creating a dataset of some data in Rcpp and
returing it to R as a Data.Frame
#include<Rcpp.h>
using namespace Rcpp;
// [[Rcpp::export]]
DataFrame simulate_data(int n = 10, int nobs = 10000) {
// create a list with n slots
List res(n);
CharacterVector list_names = CharacterVector(n);
// populate the list elements
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
list_names[i] = "col_" + std::to_string(i);
res[i] = rnorm(nobs);
}
// set the names for the list elements
res.names() = list_names;
return res;
}Using setDT(), we can convert the list to a data.table:
create_dt_naive <- function(n = 10, nobs = 10000) {
dt <- simulate_data(n, nobs)
data.table::setDT(dt)
return(dt)
}
set.seed(123)
dt <- create_dt_naive()
str(dt)Classes 'data.table' and 'data.frame': 10000 obs. of 10 variables: $ col_0: num -0.5605 -0.2302 1.5587 0.0705 0.1293 ... $ col_1: num 2.371 -0.167 0.927 -0.568 0.225 ... $ col_2: num -0.836 -0.221 -2.104 -1.668 -1.098 ... $ col_3: num -0.194 0.258 -0.538 -1.179 0.901 ... $ col_4: num 0.4825 0.7214 -0.5078 -0.0647 1.3021 ... $ col_5: num 0.26 0.918 -0.722 -0.808 -0.141 ... $ col_6: num -0.3883 0.0274 -0.2761 -0.0867 2.1477 ... $ col_7: num 0.414 -0.641 0.281 -0.694 -0.367 ... $ col_8: num 0.783 -0.424 -0.844 0.876 1.125 ... $ col_9: num 0.5732 0.0183 -0.022 -0.4278 -0.4776 ... - attr(*, ".internal.selfref")=<externalptr>
Inspecting the data.table code reveals that internally, data.table uses the setalloccol()
function to convert a data.frame to data.table after doing some checks. This can be leveraged
in the following way:
Set the class attribute of the list to "data.table", "data.frame"
#include<Rcpp.h>
using namespace Rcpp;
// [[Rcpp::export]]
List simulate_data_partial_dt(int n = 10, int nobs = 10000) {
// create a list with n slots
List res(n);
CharacterVector list_names = CharacterVector(n);
// populate the list elements
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
list_names[i] = "col_" + std::to_string(i);
res[i] = rnorm(nobs);
}
res.names() = list_names;
// Set the class attribute of the list
res.attr("class") = CharacterVector::create("data.table", "data.frame");
return res;
}and then use setalloccol() to reallocate the data by reference
create_dt_correct <- function(n = 10, nobs = 10000) {
dt <- simulate_data_partial_dt(n, nobs)
# reallocate the data.table by reference
dt <- data.table::setalloccol(dt)
return(dt)
}
set.seed(123)
dt2 <- create_dt_correct()
str(dt2)Classes 'data.table' and 'data.frame': 10000 obs. of 10 variables: $ col_0: num -0.5605 -0.2302 1.5587 0.0705 0.1293 ... $ col_1: num 2.371 -0.167 0.927 -0.568 0.225 ... $ col_2: num -0.836 -0.221 -2.104 -1.668 -1.098 ... $ col_3: num -0.194 0.258 -0.538 -1.179 0.901 ... $ col_4: num 0.4825 0.7214 -0.5078 -0.0647 1.3021 ... $ col_5: num 0.26 0.918 -0.722 -0.808 -0.141 ... $ col_6: num -0.3883 0.0274 -0.2761 -0.0867 2.1477 ... $ col_7: num 0.414 -0.641 0.281 -0.694 -0.367 ... $ col_8: num 0.783 -0.424 -0.844 0.876 1.125 ... $ col_9: num 0.5732 0.0183 -0.022 -0.4278 -0.4776 ... - attr(*, ".internal.selfref")=<externalptr>
all.equal(dt, dt2)[1] TRUE
Comparing the two methods, we see that the second implementation is a lot faster on smaller datasets.
On larger datasets, the differences is less dominant, which hints that data.table is able to use
the data in place and has no need to copy it.
# small dataset
rbenchmark::benchmark(
create_dt_naive(15, 1e3),
create_dt_correct(15, 1e3),
replications = 10
)
test replications elapsed relative user.self sys.self
2 create_dt_correct(15, 1000) 10 0.004 1.00 0.004 0.000
1 create_dt_naive(15, 1000) 10 0.011 2.75 0.009 0.001
user.child sys.child
2 0 0
1 0 0
# larger dataset
rbenchmark::benchmark(
create_dt_naive(15, 1e6),
create_dt_correct(15, 1e6),
replications = 10
)
test replications elapsed relative user.self sys.self
2 create_dt_correct(15, 1e+06) 10 3.92 1.00 3.820 0.100
1 create_dt_naive(15, 1e+06) 10 4.00 1.02 3.923 0.077
user.child sys.child
2 0 0
1 0 0
R 4.0.0 brings a new function list2DF() which we could consider as well.
Note: This post draws upon, and extends, an earlier writeup at his repo.
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This article is originally published at https://gallery.rcpp.org
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