Subsetting data in Python

While the iterator-based answers are perfectly fine, if you're working with numpy arrays (as you mention that you are) there are better and faster ways of selecting things:

import numpy as npdata = np.array([        [100002, 2006, 1.1, 0.01, 6352],        [100002, 2006, 1.2, 0.84, 304518],        [100002, 2006, 2,   1.52, 148219],        [100002, 2007, 1.1, 0.01, 6292],        [10002,  2006, 1.1, 0.01, 5968],        [10002,  2006, 1.2, 0.25, 104318],        [10002,  2007, 1.1, 0.01, 6800],        [10002,  2007, 4,   2.03, 25446],        [10002,  2008, 1.1, 0.01, 6408]    ])subset1 = data[data[:,0] == 100002]subset2 = data[data[:,0] == 10002]

This yields

subset1:

array([[  1.00002e+05,   2.006e+03,   1.10e+00, 1.00e-02,   6.352e+03],       [  1.00002e+05,   2.006e+03,   1.20e+00, 8.40e-01,   3.04518e+05],       [  1.00002e+05,   2.006e+03,   2.00e+00, 1.52e+00,   1.48219e+05],       [  1.00002e+05,   2.007e+03,   1.10e+00, 1.00e-02,   6.292e+03]])

subset2:

array([[  1.0002e+04,   2.006e+03,   1.10e+00, 1.00e-02,   5.968e+03],       [  1.0002e+04,   2.006e+03,   1.20e+00, 2.50e-01,   1.04318e+05],       [  1.0002e+04,   2.007e+03,   1.10e+00, 1.00e-02,   6.800e+03],       [  1.0002e+04,   2.007e+03,   4.00e+00, 2.03e+00,   2.5446e+04],       [  1.0002e+04,   2.008e+03,   1.10e+00, 1.00e-02,   6.408e+03]])

If you didn't know the unique values in the first column beforehand, you can use either numpy.unique1d or the builtin function set to find them.

Edit: I just realized that you wanted to select data where you have unique combinations of two columns... In that case, you might do something like this:

col1 = data[:,0]col2 = data[:,1]subsets = {}for val1, val2 in itertools.product(np.unique(col1), np.unique(col2)):    subset = data[(col1 == val1) & (col2 == val2)]    if np.any(subset):        subsets[(val1, val2)] = subset

(I'm storing the subsets as a dict, with the key being a tuple of the combination... There are certainly other (and better, depending on what you're doing) ways to do this!)

subset() in R is pretty much analogous to filter() in Python. As the reference notes, this will be used implicitly by list comprehensions, so the most concise and clear way to write the code might be

[ item for item in items if item.col2 == 2006 ] 

if, for example, your data rows were in an iterable called items.

Since I'm not familiar with R nor how this subset command works based upon your description I can suggest you take a look at itertool's groupby functionality. If given a function which outputs a value, you can form groups based upon that function's output. Taken from groupby:

groups = []uniquekeys = []data = sorted(data, key=keyfunc)for k, g in groupby(data, keyfunc):    groups.append(list(g))      # Store group iterator as a list    uniquekeys.append(k)

and then you've got your subsets. However, do be careful as the values returned are not full fledged lists. They're iterators.

I am assuming that your values are being returned on a row-by-row basis.