CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rsyntaxdataframedplyr
Konrad
Konrad

Reputation: 18595

Applying dplyr's rename to all columns while using pipe operator

I'm working with an imported data set that corresponds to the extract below:

set.seed(1)
dta <- data.frame("This is Column One" = runif(n = 10),
                     "Another amazing Column name" = runif(n = 10),
                     "!## This Columns is so special€€€" = runif(n = 10),
                    check.names = FALSE)

I'm doing some cleaning on this data using dplyr and I would like to change column names to syntatically correct ones and remove the punctuation as a second step. What I tried so far:

dta_cln <- dta %>% 
    rename(make.names(names(dta)))

generates an error:

> dta_clean <- dta %>% 
+     rename(make.names(names(dta)))
Error: All arguments to rename must be named.

Desired result

What I wan to achieve can be done in base:

names(dta) <- gsub("[[:punct:]]","",make.names(names(dta)))

which would return:

> names(dta)
[1] "ThisisColumnOne"          "AnotheramazingColumnname" "XThisColumnsissospecial"

I want to achieve the same effect but using dyplr and %>%.

Upvotes: 22

Views: 38418

Answers (5)

Tony Cronin
Tony Cronin

Reputation: 1661

Using Stringr and Dplyr, and the dot operator:

dta %>%
   dplyr::rename_all(funs(
                     stringr::str_replace_all( ., "[[:punct:]]", "_" )
   ))

Upvotes: 2

stevec
stevec

Reputation: 52498

Set column names with the pipe like so:

iris %>% `colnames<-`(c("newcol1", "newcol2", "newcol3", "newcol4", "newcol5"))

Which returns

    newcol1 newcol2 newcol3 newcol4    newcol5
1       5.1     3.5     1.4     0.2     setosa
2       4.9     3.0     1.4     0.2     setosa
3       4.7     3.2     1.3     0.2     setosa

Upvotes: 38

Jiaxiang
Jiaxiang

Reputation: 883

mtcars %>% 
  data.table::setnames(
    old = mtcars %>% names(),
    new = mtcars %>% names() %>% paste0("_new_name")
  )

The function setnames in data.table package is to rename the column names in data frame. old and new are two arguments in this function we need.

mtcars %>% names() outputs the column names of data frame mtcars in pipeline %>% way, so you can also use names(mtcars). They are same thing.

In this minimal example, I rename the column names in pipeline %>% and add all old column names with a postfix using paste0 function. You can add prefix, postfix or other rules.

Upvotes: 6

user3357059
user3357059

Reputation: 1192

You can also try this

set.seed(1)
dta <- data.frame("This is Column One" = runif(n = 10),
                 "Another amazing Column name" = runif(n = 10),
                 "!## This Columns is so special€€€" = runif(n = 10),
                check.names = FALSE)

dta <- dta  %>% 
  setNames(gsub("[^[:alnum:] ]", perl = TRUE,
            "",
            names(.))) %>% 
  setNames(gsub("(\\w)(\\w*)",
            "\\U\\1\\L\\2",
            perl = TRUE,
            names(.)))

names(dta)
[1] "This Is Column One"          "Another Amazing Column Name" " This Columns Is So Special"

Upvotes: 2

Dave Gruenewald
Dave Gruenewald

Reputation: 5689

I know this is an old question, and I'm sure you found the solution by now, but I stumbled here searching for the same question, and ultimately found a few new ways to do this.

Dplyr

Using dplyr 0.6.0 and above, there is now a rename_all function:

  dta %>% 
    rename_all(funs(gsub("[[:punct:]]", "", make.names(names(dta)))))

Which works, but it's a little messy to me. If you want more flexibility with dplyr, you can also call on:

  • rename_at
  • rename_if

Janitor

This is a pretty nice package (with plenty of additional utility) that can easily clean up column names:

library(janitor)

dta %>% 
  clean_names()

Which will rename and clean all column names to the following:

[1] "this_is_column_one"  "another_amazing_column_name"  "x_this_columns_is_so_special"

Everything becomes snake_case rather than CamelCase, but overall clean_names is very flexible in the column names it handles. If that IS a deal breaker, you can use yet another package snakecase for its function to_big_camel_case() within the rename_all function...although that is starting to get a little too esoteric

Upvotes: 36

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