Problem with mutate keyword and functions in R - r

Question

I got a problem with the use of MUTATE, please check the next code block.
output1 <- mytibble %>%
mutate(newfield = FND(mytibble$ndoc))
output1
Where FND function is a FILTER applied to a large file (5GB):
FND <- function(n){
result <- LARGETIBBLE %>% filter(LARGETIBBLE$id == n)
return(paste(unique(result$somefield),collapse=" "))
}
I want to execute FND function for each row of output1 tibble, but it just executes one time.

Answer 1

Never use $ in dplyr pipes, very rarely they are used. You can change your FND function to :
library(dplyr)
FND <- function(n){
LARGETIBBLE %>% filter(id == n) %>% pull(somefield) %>%
unique %>% paste(collapse = " ")
}
Now apply this function to every ndoc value in mytibble.
mytibble %>% mutate(newfield = purrr::map_chr(ndoc, FND))
You can also use sapply :
mytibble$newfield <- sapply(mytibble$ndoc, FND)

Answer 2

FND(mytibble$ndoc) is more suitable for data frames. When you use functions such as mutate on a tibble, there is no need to specify the name of the tibble, only that of the column. The symbols %>% are already making sure that only data from the tibble is used. Thus your example would be:
output1 <- mytibble %>%
mutate(newfield = FND(ndoc))
FND <- function(n){
result <- LARGETIBBLE %>% filter(id == n)
return(paste(unique(result$somefield),collapse=" "))
}
This would be theoretically, however I do not know if your function FND will work, maybe try it and if not, give some practical example with data and what you are trying to achieve.