Enter New Column Names as String in Dplyr's Rename Function

Enter new column names as string in dplyr's rename function

I think this is what you were looking for. It is the use of rename_ as @Henrik suggested, but the argument has an, lets say, interesting, name:

> myFunc <- function(df, col){
+   new <- paste0(col, '_1')
+   out <- dplyr::rename_(df, .dots=setNames(list(col), new))
+   return(out)
+ }
> myFunc(data.frame(x=c(1,2,3)), "x")
  x_1
1   1
2   2
3   3
>

Note the use of setNames to use the value of new as name in the list.

How to rename selected columns using dplyr with new column names as strings

If you want to use dplyr's rename function, it would be best to create a named vector / list and call it using the .dots argument in the standard evaluation version:

cols <- c("Sepal.Length", "Petal.Length")
to_app <- ".xxx"
cols <- setNames(cols, paste0(cols, to_app))

df %>% rename_(.dots = cols)

## A tibble: 5 × 3
#  Sepal.Length.xxx Sepal.Width Petal.Length.xxx
#*            <dbl>       <dbl>            <dbl>
#1              5.1         3.5              1.4
#2              4.9         3.0              1.4
#3              4.7         3.2              1.3
#4              4.6         3.1              1.5
#5              5.0         3.6              1.4

Note however, that this approach is subject to change with the next version 0.6.0 of dplyr (see e.g. http://blog.rstudio.org/2017/04/13/dplyr-0-6-0-coming-soon/ and http://dplyr.tidyverse.org/articles/programming.html).

R dplyr: rename variables using string functions

I think you're looking at the documentation for plyr::rename, not dplyr::rename. You would do something like this with dplyr::rename:

iris %>% rename_(.dots=setNames(names(.), tolower(gsub("\\.", "_", names(.)))))

Using glue in new column name in rename() in R

The following is also possible, without explicit use of glue, but with the walrus operator :=, like in @Ronak Shah's answer:

df %>% rename("Change since {date_variable}" := change)

Pass character string of column names (e.g. c(speed, dist ) to `across` function in R

You can't use substitute() or eval() on character vectors. You need to parse those character vectors into language objects. Otherwise when you eval a string, you just get that string back. It's not like eval in other languages. One way to do the parsing is str2lang. Then you can inject that expression into the across using tidy evaulation's !!. For example

mtcars_2 %>% 
  mutate(across(.cols = !!str2lang(.$cols_to_modify),.fns = round))

Parsing string as column name in dplyr

I would use a named vector instead of trying to mess around with the dplyr programming nuances. A benefit is that this method is already vectorized.

rename_cols <- function(col) {
  
  name = paste0(col, "_new") #I want to be able to parse this into the rename function below
  
  mtcars %>% 
    rename(setNames(col, name))
}

rename_cols(colnames(mtcars))
#                     mpg_new cyl_new disp_new hp_new drat_new wt_new qsec_new vs_new am_new gear_new carb_new
# Mazda RX4              21.0       6    160.0    110     3.90  2.620    16.46      0      1        4        4
# Mazda RX4 Wag          21.0       6    160.0    110     3.90  2.875    17.02      0      1        4        4
# Datsun 710             22.8       4    108.0     93     3.85  2.320    18.61      1      1        4        1
# Hornet 4 Drive         21.4       6    258.0    110     3.08  3.215    19.44      1      0        3        1
# Hornet Sportabout      18.7       8    360.0    175     3.15  3.440    17.02      0      0        3        2
# Valiant                18.1       6    225.0    105     2.76  3.460    20.22      1      0        3        1
# ...

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Edit

In this case, you might also find rename_with() to be what you need.

library(dplyr)

colnames(mtcars) -> cols

mtcars %>% 
  rename_with(~ paste0(., "_new"), any_of(cols))

# which is the same as the more concise but maybe less clear...
mtcars %>% 
  rename_with(paste0, any_of(cols), "_new")

Rename all column names that include a certain string

You can use rename_with -

library(dplyr)
library(stringr)

da %>% rename_with(~str_replace(., 'likes_comment', 'number_likes'))

#  number_likes_1 number_likes_2 number_likes_3 quotes_comment1
#1              1              2              5               2
#2              2              2              2               1
#3              3              3              3               3
#4              4              1              1               4

#  quotes_comment2_ quotes_comment3
#1                3               2
#2                5               3
#3                7               1
#4                1               2

How to use rename_with() in pipe to change all column names from vector

It doesn't seem like rename_with is the right function for this. I guess you could do

iris %>% 
  rename_with(~newcolnames)

as kind of a hack. You can also use rename

iris %>% 
  rename(!!!setNames(names(.), newcolnames))

But the setNames method just seems much more apt.

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

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

How to replace column names that include specific string r

We can use rename_at

library(dplyr)
df1 <- df1 %>%
          rename_at(vars(ends_with('score')), ~ replace.cols)

df1
#  a b c_score a_score
#1 1 5      10       1
#2 2 6      10       3
#3 3 7       2       5
#4 4 8       3       6
#5 5 9       4       7

---

or with str_remove

library(stringr)
df1 %>%
     rename_at(vars(ends_with('score')), ~ str_remove(., '\\.\\d+'))

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Or using base R (assuming the column names order is maintained in 'replace.cols')

names(df1)[endsWith(names(df1), 'score')] <- replace.cols

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