Conditional binary join and update by reference using the data.table package

Question

So here is my real life problem which I feel like can be easily solved and I\'m missing something obvious here. I have two big data sets called TK and DFT

Answer 1

Copying from Arun's updated answer here

TK[venue_id %in% 1:2, New_id := DFT[.SD, New_id]][]
#    venue_id DFT_id New_id
# 1:        1      1      3
# 2:        2      1      3
# 3:        1      2      4
# 4:        3      2   9401
# 5:        2      3      2
# 6:        3      3    456

His answer gives the details of what is going on.

Answer 2

Here's a very simple approach:

TK[DFT, New_id := ifelse(venue_id %in% 1:2, i.New_id, New_id)][]
#    venue_id DFT_id New_id
# 1:        1      1      3
# 2:        2      1      3
# 3:        1      2      4
# 4:        3      2   9401
# 5:        2      3      2
# 6:        3      3    456

I haven't checked, but I suspect the other answer is faster.