r - How to assign a unique ID number to each group of identical values in a column

Question

(This question already has answers here): question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24119599/how-to-assign-a-unique-id-number-to-each-group-of-identical-values-in-a-column

Answer 1

How about

df2 <- transform(df,id=as.numeric(factor(sample)))

?

I think this (cribbed from Add ID column by group) should be slightly more efficient, although perhaps a little harder to remember:

df3 <- transform(df, id=match(sample, unique(sample)))
all.equal(df2,df3)  ## TRUE

If you want to do this in tidyverse:

library(dplyr)
df %>% group_by(sample) %>% mutate(id=cur_group_id())