data.table is an R package that extends base R’s data.frame for high-performance data manipulation. It offers concise syntax, blazing speed, and memory-efficient operations. It supports fast file reading/writing, joins, grouping, reshaping, and updates by reference. It is heavily used in large data workflows, big data in R, production pipelines, etc. Extremely efficient grouping/aggregation/summarization; can handle very large datasets (hundreds of millions to billions of rows) in memory (if available). Relies only on base R; maintained API, active community; good memory efficiency. Non-equi joins, overlapping range joins, ordered joins, joining with aggregations, etc.
Features
- Very fast I/O: fread() for reading delimited files, fwrite() for writing them efficiently
- Extremely efficient grouping / aggregation / summarization; can handle very large datasets (hundreds of millions to billions of rows) in memory (if available)
- Fast / flexible joins: non-equi joins, overlapping range joins, ordered joins, joining with aggregations etc.
- In-place (by reference) column creation, updates, deletions to avoid copying large datasets
- Reshaping capabilities: melt / dcast (long ↔ wide), etc.
- Minimal dependencies: relies only on base R; maintained API, active community; good memory efficiency
Categories
Package ManagersLicense
Mozilla Public License 1.0 (MPL)Follow data.table
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