[r] count number of rows in a data frame in R based on group

Here is another way of using aggregate to count rows by group:

my.data <- read.table(text = '
    month.year    my.cov
      Jan.2000     apple
      Jan.2000      pear
      Jan.2000     peach
      Jan.2001     apple
      Jan.2001     peach
      Feb.2002      pear
', header = TRUE, stringsAsFactors = FALSE, na.strings = NA)

rows.per.group  <- aggregate(rep(1, length(my.data$month.year)),
                             by=list(my.data$month.year), sum)
rows.per.group

#    Group.1 x
# 1 Feb.2002 1
# 2 Jan.2000 3
# 3 Jan.2001 2