CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rdataframe
Ruslan Sayakhov
Ruslan Sayakhov

Reputation: 169

Name of columns depends on data

I have the question that is linked to the financial data of stock (open price, close close, high, low). Since the data which we download are not always the similar one, it's the problem to automize the code where this data are used.

F.E. sometimes I download the data that have the next columns:

open close high low

Sometimes this columns may be names as:

open_ask close_bid high low

Is there function in R which allows to work with data, where the columns may be named similar but not exactly same name? F.e. I want to plot the candle chart, and it's required that R may use the necessary column, where the open and close price are.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 44

Answers (1)

Tim Biegeleisen
Tim Biegeleisen

Reputation: 522161

You could try identifying columns in your data frame using a regex which provides a logical match. For example, to match the open or open_ask columns, you could use:

open_col <- df[, grepl("open", names(df))]

If the names cannot be correlated in any meaningful way, then you might be able to go by position. But this runs the risk of error should columns shift position, whereas a regex works regardless of where a potentially matching column is positioned.

Upvotes: 0

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