Lagged values multiple columns with function in R - r

Question

I would like to create lagged values for multiple columns in R.
First, I used a function to create lead/lag like this:
mleadlag <- function(x, n, ts_id) {
pos <- match(as.numeric(ts_id) + n, as.numeric(ts_id))
x[pos]
}
Second, I would like to apply this function for several columns in R. firm.characteristics is list of columns I would like to compute lagged values.
library(dplyr)
firm.characteristics <- colnames(df)[4:6]
for(i in 1:length(firm.characteristics)){
df <- df %>%
group_by(company) %>%
mutate(!!paste0("lag_", i) := mleadlag(df[[i]] ,-1, fye)) %>%
ungroup()
}
However, I didn't get the correct values. The output for all companies in year t is the last row in year t-1. It didn't group by the company any compute the lagged values.
Can anyone help me which is wrong in the loop? Or what should I do to get the correct lagged values?
Thank you so much for your help.
Reproducible sample could be like this:
set.seed(42) ## for sake of reproducibility
n <- 6
dat <- data.frame(company=1:n,
fye=2009,
x=rnorm(n),
y=rnorm(n),
z=rnorm(n),
k=rnorm(n),
m=rnorm(n))
dat2 <- data.frame(company=1:n,
fye=2010,
x=rnorm(n),
y=rnorm(n),
z=rnorm(n),
k=rnorm(n),
m=rnorm(n))
dat3 <- data.frame(company=1:n,
fye=2011,
x=rnorm(n),
y=rnorm(n),
z=rnorm(n),
k=rnorm(n),
m=rnorm(n))
df <- rbind(dat,dat2,dat3)

Answer 1

I would try to stay away from loops in the tidyverse. Many of the tidyverse applications that would traditionally require loops already exist and are very fast, which creates more efficient and intuitive code (the latter being my opinion). This is a great use case for dplyr's across() functionality. I first changed the df to a tibble.
df %>%
as_tibble() %>%
group_by(company) %>%
mutate(
across(firm.characteristics, ~lag(., 1L))
) %>%
ungroup()
This generates the required lagged values. For more information see dplyr's across documentation.