Select nth element in data frame by factor

Question

I\'ve got a dataframe with a text column name and factor city. It is ordered alphabetically firstly by city and then name. No

Answer 1

A data.table solution

library(data.table)
DT <- data.table(test)

# return all columns from the subset data.table
n <- 4
DT[,.SD[n,] ,by = city]
##      city name
## 1: Atlanta   NA
## 2:  Boston Matt
## 3: Seattle   NA

# if you just want the nth element of `name` 
# (excluding other columns that might be there)
# any of the following would work

DT[,.SD[n,] ,by = city, .SDcols = 'name']


DT[, .SD[n, list(name)], by = city]


DT[, list(name = name[n]), by = city]