CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rdplyr
vikas
vikas

Reputation: 1186

R: dplyr - Rename column name by position instead of name

I want to know if there is a way to rename column names by position of the column, rather than changing by column name.

Below snippet shows how to change by name. 

suppressPackageStartupMessages(library(dplyr))

gd_url  <- "http://tiny.cc/gapminder"
gtbl  <- gd_url %>%
  read.delim %>%
  tbl_df

gtbl  <- gtbl %>% rename(life_exp = lifeExp, 
                         gdp_percap = gdpPercap)
gtbl

Upvotes: 28

Views: 16471

Answers (2)

Max Shron
Max Shron

Reputation: 966

Much simpler: you can rename a column just by using numbers. This works:

df <- df %>% 
        rename(newNameForFirstColumn = 1, newNameForSecondColumn = 2)

Upvotes: 61

Harney
Harney

Reputation: 346

If you prefer to stick within the dplyr pipe-world, as of dplyr 0.7.2 it is possible to rename by position using the following nomenclature:

Using your original example: 

gtbl  <- gtbl %>% rename("life_exp" = !!names(.[5]),
                         "gdp_percap" = !!names(.[6]))

Regards for dredging up an older post. I had a similar problem and viewed this question before figuring out this alternative solution.

Upvotes: 20

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