Make `copy()` a shallow copy
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Assessment
- Difficulty
- 5/5
- Estimated time
- Over a week
- Newbie friendliness
- 25/100
Research direction
Start by reading the linked discussion and the existing copy() behavior, including the mentioned shallow() and := paths. Clarify how shallow copying should interact with the first := modification on a column, then identify the relevant implementation and tests. Done means copy() is shallow, existing copy() usage is safe, and the required column-copy behavior is covered.
Written by the indexing model from the issue text.
Description
Per this comment https://github.com/Rdatatable/data.table/issues/5129#issuecomment-926181331 it looks like it was on the to-do list at some point. As far as I could see there wasn't an open issue referencing it.
Just to reply on inplace in point 3 and the comments about copying being expensive. I've been working on making
copy()be a shallow copy. Then it won't be expensive. There was talk of exportingshallow()but I always wanted to makecopy()be shallow and just havecopy(). That way, existing usage ofcopy()becomes faster too. After acopy(), the first:=on a column would need to copy that column. It's a bit tricky for multiple reasons but that's the direction I'm working on at the moment.
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- R
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- Merged PRs (30d)
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