rbindDataframe: A fast method for concatenating data.frames
Description
Performs the same action as do.call(rbind, list_of_dataframes), but dramatically faster. Part
of the speed comes from assuming that all of the data.frames have the same column names and
types. If desirved an additional factor column can be added that specifies the original list
element associated with each row. The argument `element.colname` is used to name this column.
Usage
rbindDataframe(dflist, element.colname)
Arguments
dflist
list of data.frames
element.colname
scalar character, name for additional factor column giving the name
of the element of `dflist` corresponding to each row. `dflist` must be named to use this feature.
Value
data.frame
Details
For a list of 1000 data.frames with 884 rows and 12 columns `rbindDataframe` takes 0.553s and
`do.call(rbind,x)` takes 327.304s, a 600X speedup. This pure-R solution is made possible by
the lovely shallow copy features Michael Lawrence has added to base R.