Here's a data.table solution:
d.df <- read.table(header=T, text="V1 | V2
1 | a,b,c
2 | a,c
3 | b,d
4 | e,f", stringsAsFactors=F, sep="|", strip.white = TRUE)
require(data.table)
d.dt <- data.table(d.df, key="V1")
out <- d.dt[, list(V2 = unlist(strsplit(V2, ","))), by=V1]
# V1 V2
# 1: 1 a
# 2: 1 b
# 3: 1 c
# 4: 2 a
# 5: 2 c
# 6: 3 b
# 7: 3 d
# 8: 4 e
# 9: 4 f
> sapply(out$V2, nchar) # (or simply nchar(out$V2))
# a b c a c b d e f
# 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
