R: Fast string split on first delimiter occurence

Update

The stri_split_fixed function in more recent versions of "stringi" have a simplify argument that can be set to TRUE to return a matrix. Thus, the updated solution would be:

stri_split_fixed(df1$combCol2, ",", 2, simplify = TRUE)

Original answer (with updated benchmarks)

If you are comfortable with the "stringr" syntax and don't want to veer too far from it, but you also want to benefit from a speed boost, try the "stringi" package instead:

library(stringr)
library(stringi)
system.time(temp1 <- str_split_fixed(df1$combCol2, ',', 2))
#    user  system elapsed 
#    3.25    0.00    3.25 
system.time(temp2a <- do.call(rbind, stri_split_fixed(df1$combCol2, ",", 2)))
#    user  system elapsed 
#    0.04    0.00    0.05 
system.time(temp2b <- stri_split_fixed(df1$combCol2, ",", 2, simplify = TRUE))
#    user  system elapsed 
#    0.01    0.00    0.01

Most of the "stringr" functions have "stringi" parallels, but as can be seen from this example, the "stringi" output required one extra step of binding the data to create the output as a matrix instead of as a list.

Here's how it compares with @RichardScriven's suggestion in the comments:

fun1a <- function() do.call(rbind, stri_split_fixed(df1$combCol2, ",", 2))
fun1b <- function() stri_split_fixed(df1$combCol2, ",", 2, simplify = TRUE)
fun2 <- function() {
  do.call(rbind, regmatches(df1$combCol2, regexpr(",", df1$combCol2), 
                            invert = TRUE))
} 

library(microbenchmark)
microbenchmark(fun1a(), fun1b(), fun2(), times = 10)
# Unit: milliseconds
#     expr       min        lq      mean    median        uq       max neval
#  fun1a()  42.72647  46.35848  59.56948  51.94796  69.29920  98.46330    10
#  fun1b()  17.55183  18.59337  20.09049  18.84907  22.09419  26.85343    10
#   fun2() 370.82055 404.23115 434.62582 439.54923 476.02889 480.97912    10