How to delete columns that contain ONLY NAs

Question

I have a data frame containing some columns with all NA values  how can I delete them from the data frame   Can I use the function   na omit         specifying some additional arguments

User · Answer

An intuitive script  dplyr  select if   all is na        It literally keeps only not-all-elements-missing columns   to delete all-element-missing columns      gt  df  lt - data frame  id   1 10   nas   rep  NA   10     vals   sample  c  1 3   NA     10   repl   TRUE       gt  df   gt   glimpse   Observations  10 Variables  3   id    lt int gt  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10   nas   lt lgl gt  NA  NA  NA  NA  NA  NA  NA  NA  NA  NA   vals  lt int gt  NA  1  1  NA  1  1  1  2  3  NA   gt  df   gt   select if   all is na          id vals 1   1   NA 2   2    1 3   3    1 4   4   NA 5   5    1 6   6    1 7   7    1 8   8    2 9   9    3 10 10   NA

User · Answer

Because performance was really important for me  I benchmarked all the functions above   NOTE  Data from  Simon O Hanlon s post  Only with size 15000 instead of 10   library tidyverse  library microbenchmark   set seed 123  df  lt - data frame id   1 15000                   nas   rep NA  15000                     vals   sample c 1 3  NA   15000                                 repl   TRUE   df  MadSconeF1  lt - function x  x   colSums is na x      nrow x    MadSconeF2  lt - function x  x colSums  is na x    gt  0   BradCannell  lt - function x  x   gt   select if  sum  is na      gt  0   SimonOHanlon  lt - function x  x     apply x  2  function y  all is na y      jsta  lt - function x  janitor  remove empty x   SiboJiang  lt - function x  x   gt   dplyr  select if   all is na       akrun  lt - function x  Filter function y   all is na y    x   mbm  lt - microbenchmark     MadSconeF1     MadSconeF1 df       MadSconeF2     MadSconeF2 df       BradCannell     BradCannell df       SimonOHanlon     SimonOHanlon df       SiboJiang     SiboJiang df       jsta     jsta df        akrun     akrun df      times   1000   mbm   Results   Unit  microseconds          expr    min      lq      mean  median      uq      max neval  cld    MadSconeF1  154 5  178 35  257 9396  196 05  219 25   5001 0  1000 a       MadSconeF2  180 4  209 75  281 2541  226 40  251 05   6322 1  1000 a      BradCannell 2579 4 2884 90 3330 3700 3059 45 3379 30  33667 3  1000    d  SimonOHanlon  511 0  565 00  943 3089  586 45  623 65 210338 4  1000  b       SiboJiang 2558 1 2853 05 3377 6702 3010 30 3310 00  89718 0  1000    d          jsta 1544 8 1652 45 2031 5065 1706 05 1872 65  11594 9  1000   c          akrun   93 8  111 60  139 9482  121 90  135 45   3851 2  1000 a   autoplot mbm      mbm   gt      tbl df     gt     ggplot aes sample   time        stat qq        stat qq line       facet wrap  expr  scales    free

User · Answer

Here is a dplyr solution  df   gt   select if  sum  is na      gt  0   Update  The summarise if   function is superseded as of dplyr 1 0  Here are two other solutions that use the where   tidyselect function  df   gt      select      where         sum  is na  x    gt  0            df   gt      select      where          all is na  x

User · Answer

One way of doing it   df   colSums is na df      nrow df     If the count of NAs in a column is equal to the number of rows  it must be entirely NA   Or similarly  df colSums  is na df    gt  0

User · Answer

Another option is the janitor package   df  lt - remove empty cols df    https   github com sfirke janitor

User · Answer

It seeems like you want to remove ONLY columns with ALL NAs  leaving columns with some rows that do have NAs  I would do this  but I am sure there is an efficient vectorised soution    set seed for reproducibility set seed  lt - 103 df  lt - data frame  id   1 10   nas   rep  NA   10     vals   sample  c  1 3   NA     10   repl   TRUE     df        id nas vals     1   1  NA   NA     2   2  NA    2     3   3  NA    1     4   4  NA    2     5   5  NA    2     6   6  NA    3     7   7  NA    2     8   8  NA    3     9   9  NA    3     10 10  NA    2   Use this command to remove columns that are entirely NA values  it will elave columns where only some vlaues are NA df      apply  df   2   function x  all is na x              id vals     1   1   NA     2   2    2     3   3    1     4   4    2     5   5    2     6   6    3     7   7    2     8   8    3     9   9    3     10 10    2   If you find yourself in the situation where you want to remove columns that have any NA values you can simply change the all command above to any

User · Answer

Another option with Filter  Filter function x   all is na x    df    NOTE  Data from  Simon O Hanlon s post

[r] How to delete columns that contain ONLY NAs?

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