CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rfor-looprename
RobertF
RobertF

Reputation: 904

How to rename data frame variables as x1, x2, ... in R?

I know there's a simple solution, but I keep getting error messages. Given this sample data frame:

y <- c(1,2,3)
a <- c(2,4,6)
b <- c(4,8,12)
c <- c(8,16,24)
z <- as.data.frame(cbind(y,a,b,c))
z
  y a  b  c
1 1 2  4  8
2 2 4  8 16
3 3 6 12 24

I'd like an automated piece of code that renames column 2 to x1, column 3 to x2, and column 3 to x3. I've attempted:

for (i in 2:4){ x=colnames(z[i]); rename(z, c(x=paste("x",i,sep=""))) }

and

apply(z[,2:4], 2, function(x) rename(z, c(x=paste("x",i,sep="")))  )

but no success. Any help is much appreciated!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3971

Answers (1)

akrun
akrun

Reputation: 887168

You don't need a loop

 names(z)[-1] <- paste0('x', 1:(ncol(z)-1))

EDIT: Added @Pierre Lafortune's suggestion

Upvotes: 4

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