Replacement for rename in dplyr

Question

I like plyr s renaming function rename   I have recently started using dplyr  and was wondering if there is an easy way to rename variables using a function from dplyr  that is as easy to use as to plyr s rename

User · Answer

It is not listed as a function in dplyr (yet): http://cran.rstudio.org/web/packages/dplyr/dplyr.pdf

The function below works (almost) the same if you don't want to load both plyr and dplyr

rename <- function(dat, oldnames, newnames) {
  datnames <- colnames(dat)
  datnames[which(datnames %in% oldnames)] <- newnames
  colnames(dat) <- datnames
  dat
}

dat <- rename(mtcars,c("mpg","cyl"), c("mympg","mycyl"))
head(dat)

                  mympg mycyl disp  hp drat    wt  qsec vs am gear carb
Mazda RX4          21.0     6  160 110 3.90 2.620 16.46  0  1    4    4
Mazda RX4 Wag      21.0     6  160 110 3.90 2.875 17.02  0  1    4    4
Datsun 710         22.8     4  108  93 3.85 2.320 18.61  1  1    4    1
Hornet 4 Drive     21.4     6  258 110 3.08 3.215 19.44  1  0    3    1
Hornet Sportabout  18.7     8  360 175 3.15 3.440 17.02  0  0    3    2
Valiant            18.1     6  225 105 2.76 3.460 20.22  1  0    3    1

Edit: The comment by Romain produces the following (note that the changes function requires dplyr .1.1)

> dplyr:::changes(mtcars, dat)
Changed variables:
          old         new        
disp      0x108b4b0e0 0x108b4e370
hp        0x108b4b210 0x108b4e4a0
drat      0x108b4b340 0x108b4e5d0
wt        0x108b4b470 0x108b4e700
qsec      0x108b4b5a0 0x108b4e830
vs        0x108b4b6d0 0x108b4e960
am        0x108b4b800 0x108b4ea90
gear      0x108b4b930 0x108b4ebc0
carb      0x108b4ba60 0x108b4ecf0
mpg       0x1033ee7c0            
cyl       0x10331d3d0            
mympg                 0x108b4e110
mycyl                 0x108b4e240

Changed attributes:
          old         new        
names     0x10c100558 0x10c2ea3f0
row.names 0x108b4bb90 0x108b4ee20
class     0x103bd8988 0x103bd8f58

User · Answer

dplyr  gt   1 0 0 In addition to dplyr  rename in newer versions of dplyr is rename with    rename with   renames columns using a function   You can apply a function over a tidy-select set of columns using the  cols argument  iris   gt      dplyr  rename with  fn     gsub  quot  S quot    quot s quot        cols   where is numeric        sepal Length sepal Width Petal Length Petal Width    Species 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 4            4 6         3 1          1 5         0 2     setosa 5            5 0         3 6          1 4         0 2     setosa

User · Answer

You can actually use plyr s rename function as part of dplyr chains  I think every function that a  takes a data frame as the first argument and b  returns a data frame works for chaining  Here is an example   library  plyr   library  dplyr    DF   data frame var 1 5   DF   gt          rename  from  plyr      rename c  var   x      gt          mutate  from  dplyr   note order in which libraries are loaded      mutate x sq x 2       x x sq   1 1    1   2 2    4   3 3    9   4 4   16   5 5   25   UPDATE  The current version of dplyr supports renaming directly as part of the select function  see Romain Francois post above   The general statement about using non-dplyr functions as part of dplyr chains is still valid though and rename is an interesting example

User · Answer

I tried to use dplyr  rename and I get an error   occ 5d  lt - dplyr  rename occ 5d  rowname  code 5d   Error  Unknown column  code 5d   Call  rlang  last error    to see a backtrace   I instead used the base R function which turns out to be quite simple and effective   names occ 5d  1     code 5d

User · Answer

dplyr version 0 3 added a new rename   function that works just like plyr  rename     df  lt - rename df  new name   old name

User · Answer

While not exactly renaming  dplyr  select all   can be used to reformat column names  This example replaces spaces and periods with an underscore and converts everything to lower case   iris   gt       select all  gsub    s                   gt      select all tolower    gt      head 2    sepal length sepal width petal length petal width species 1          5 1         3 5          1 4         0 2  setosa 2          4 9         3 0          1 4         0 2  setosa

User · Answer

The next version of dplyr will support an improved version of select that also incorporates renaming    gt  mtcars2  lt - select  mtcars  disp2   disp    gt  head  mtcars2                     disp2 Mazda RX4         160 Mazda RX4 Wag     160 Datsun 710        108 Hornet 4 Drive    258 Hornet Sportabout 360 Valiant           225  gt  changes  mtcars  mtcars2   Changed variables        old         new disp  0x105500400 disp2             0x105500400  Changed attributes        old         new names 0x106d2cf50 0x106d28a98

[r] Replacement for "rename" in dplyr

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