return from function using unnest () takes a LONG time to show up in the Global Environment

[Nabeel]

I'm using Rstudio 2021.09.1 and R 4.1.2 and tidyverse 1.3.1. The system.time at the bottom says it took R .08 seconds but it takes a full minute or so for the output tibble to show up in the Rstudio Global environment. If the dataset had more rows the time gets impossibly long. Until ithe result shows up in the Global environment nothing else can be executed.

library(tidyverse)
library(gapminder)

gapminder_w_NAs <- gapminder %>%
mutate(lifeExp = if_else(runif(n()) < 0.1, NA_real_, lifeExp))

big_df <- gapminder %>% slice(rep(1:n(), each = 20)) %>%
mutate(lifeExp = if_else(runif(n()) < 0.1, NA_real_, lifeExp))

imp_model <- function(df) {
lm(lifeExp ~ year, data = df)
}

add_predictions <- function(data, model, var = "pred") {
data[[var]] <- predict(model, newdata = data)
data
}

impute_lifeExp <- function(df, imp_mod) {
nested <-
df %>%
group_by(continent) %>% nest() %>%
mutate(
model = map(data, imp_mod),
preds = map2(data, model, add_predictions)
)

nested %>%
unnest(preds)
}

rm(output)
system.time(
output <- impute_lifeExp(big_df, imp_model)
)

[Nabeel]

The problem is caused by unnest'ing one list column when there are several in the tibble. Adding select solves the problem.

nested %>%
select(preds)
unnest(preds)

The model list-col is not needed once it is used to produce the prediction.

The data list-col is not need because the preds list-col includes all the data.