I have a vector of scalar values of which I'm trying to get: "How many different values there are".
For instance in group <- c(1,2,3,1,2,3,4,6)
unique values are 1,2,3,4,6
so I want to get 5
.
I came up with:
length(unique(group))
But I'm not sure it's the most efficient way to do it. Isn't there a better way to do this?
Note: My case is more complex than the example, consisting of around 1000 numbers with at most 25 different values.
Here are a few ideas, all points towards your solution already being very fast. length(unique(x))
is what I would have used as well:
x <- sample.int(25, 1000, TRUE)
library(microbenchmark)
microbenchmark(length(unique(x)),
nlevels(factor(x)),
length(table(x)),
sum(!duplicated(x)))
# Unit: microseconds
# expr min lq median uq max neval
# length(unique(x)) 24.810 25.9005 27.1350 28.8605 48.854 100
# nlevels(factor(x)) 367.646 371.6185 380.2025 411.8625 1347.343 100
# length(table(x)) 505.035 511.3080 530.9490 575.0880 1685.454 100
# sum(!duplicated(x)) 24.030 25.7955 27.4275 30.0295 70.446 100