`by` could accepted a named vector to set names when it's a character vector

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
35/100
Issue type
Feature
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
r
Domain
data

Research direction

Start by tracing how the by argument handles character vectors and named expressions, using the examples in the issue as the target behavior. Then inspect the related .SDcols handling and existing tests, if available. Done means the named-vector form gives the requested grouping names and any .SDcols behavior is explicitly resolved with coverage.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

breaking-change feature request
require(data.table)
dt = data.table(x=c(1,1,2,2), y=1, z=2)

dt[, sum(y), by=.(xx = x)] # possible to name columns in by when using .()
dt[, sum(y), by=c(xx="x")] # could work as well

The same could be used for .SDcols as well in case of aggregations.. perhaps.

Dominant language
R
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