How to rename a single column in a data frame

Question

I know if I have a data frame with more than 1 column  I can use   colnames x   lt - c  col1   col2     to rename the columns   How do I do this if it s just one column  Meaning a vector or data frame with only one column in it   Example   trSamp  lt - data frame sample trainer index  10000   head trSamp       sample trainer index  10000    1                      5907862   2                      2181266   3                      7368504   4                      1949790   5                      3475174   6                      6062879  ncol trSamp     1  1 class trSamp     1   data frame  class trSamp 1      1   data frame  class trSamp  1      1   numeric  colnames trSamp  2   lt -  newname2    Error in names x   lt - value         names  attribute  2  must be the same length as the vector  1

User · Answer

This is likely already out there  but I was playing with renaming fields while searching out a solution and tried this on a whim  Worked for my purposes    Table1 FieldNewName  lt - Table1 FieldOldName Table1 FieldOldName  lt - NULL   Edit begins here      This works as well    df  lt - rename df  c  oldColName     newColName

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Let df be the dataframe you have with col names myDays and temp  If you want to rename  quot myDays quot  to  quot Date quot   library plyr  rename df c  quot myDays quot     quot Date quot     or with pipe  you can dfNew       lt - df   gt      plyr  rename c  quot myDays quot     quot Date quot

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I would simply add a new column to the data frame with the name I want and get the data for it from the existing column  like this   dataf value dataf Article1Order   then I remove the old column  like this   dataf Article1Order lt -NULL   This code might seem silly  But it works perfectly

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I think the best way of renaming columns is by using the dplyr package like this   require dplyr  df   rename df  new col01   old col01  new col02   old col02         It works the same for renaming one or many columns in any dataset

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colnames trSamp  2   lt -  newname2    attempts to set the second column s name   Your object only has one column  so the command throws an error   This should be sufficient   colnames trSamp   lt -  newname2

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colnames df  colnames df      oldName    lt -  newName

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Try   colnames x  2   lt -  newname2

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We can use rename with to rename columns with a function  stringr functions  for example    Consider the following data df 1   df 1  lt - data frame    x   replicate n   3  expr   rnorm n   3  mean   10  sd   1       y   sample x   1 2  size   10  replace   TRUE     names df 1     1   x 1   x 2   x 3   y     Rename all variables with dplyr  everything     library tidyverse   df 1   gt      rename with  data       cols   everything                     fn   str replace  pattern                        replacement   str c  var   seq along     sep           gt      names      1   var 1   var 2   var 3   var 4    Rename by name particle with some dplyr verbs  starts with  ends with  contains  matches         Example with    x variables    df 1   gt      rename with  data       cols   contains                       fn   str replace  pattern                        replacement   str c  var   seq along     sep           gt      names      1   var 1   var 2   var 3   y    Rename by class with many functions of class test  like is integer  is numeric  is factor     Example with is integer  y    df 1   gt      rename with  data       cols   is integer                  fn   str replace  pattern                        replacement   str c  var   seq along     sep           gt      names      1   x 1     x 2     x 3     var 1    The warning      Warning messages    1  In stri replace first regex string  pattern  fix replacement replacement          longer object length is not a multiple of shorter object length   2  In names cols   lt -  fn names cols              number of items to replace is not a multiple of replacement length   It is not relevant  as it is just an inconsistency of seq along    with the replace function

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This is an old question  but it is worth noting that you can now use setnames from the data table package    library data table   setnames DF   oldName    newName      or since the data frame in question is just one column   setnames DF   newName      And for reference s sake  in general  more than once column  nms  lt - c  col1 name    col2 name   etc     setnames DF  nms

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This can also be done using Hadley s plyr package  and the rename function   library plyr   df  lt - data frame foo rnorm 1000    df  lt - rename df c  foo   samples      You can rename by the name  without knowing the position  and perform multiple renames at once   After doing a merge  for example  you might end up with     letterid id x id y 1       70    2    1 2      116    6    5 3      116    6    4 4      116    6    3 5      766   14    9 6      766   14   13   Which you can then rename in one step using   letters  lt - rename letters c  id x     source    id y     target       letterid source target 1       70      2      1 2      116      6      5 3      116      6      4 4      116      6      3 5      766     14      9 6      766     14     13

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If you know that your dataframe has only one column  you can use  names trSamp   lt -  newname2

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I would simply change a column name to the dataset with the new name I want with the following code  names dataset  index value   lt -  new col name

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I like the next style for rename dataframe column names one by one   colnames df  which colnames df      old colname     lt -  new colname    where   which colnames df      old colname     returns by the index of the specific column

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I find that the most convenient way to rename a single column is using dplyr  rename at    library dplyr  cars   gt   rename at  speed    new     gt   head      cars   gt   rename at vars speed    new     gt   head cars   gt   rename at 1   new     gt   head      new dist   1   4    2   2   4   10   3   7    4   4   7   22   5   8   16   6   9   10    works well in pipe chaines convenient when names are stored in variables works with a name or an column index clear and compact

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This is a generalized way in which you do not have to remember the exact location of the variable     df   dataframe   old var name   The name you don t like anymore   new var name   The name you want to get  names df  names df      old var name    lt -  new var name    This code pretty much does the following    names df  looks into all the names in the df  names df     old var name  extracts the variable name you want to check  lt -  new var name  assigns the new variable name

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The OP s question has been well and truly answered  However  here s a trick that may be useful in some situations  partial matching of the column name  irrespective of its position in a dataframe   Partial matching on the name   d  lt - data frame name1   NA  Reported Cases  WHO  2011    NA  name3   NA       name1 Reported Cases  WHO  2011  name3    1    NA                         NA    NA names d  grepl  Reported   names d     lt -  name2       name1 name2 name3    1    NA    NA    NA   Another example  partial matching on the presence of  punctuation    d  lt - data frame name1   NA  Reported Cases  WHO  2011    NA  name3   NA       name1 Reported Cases  WHO  2011  name3    1    NA                         NA    NA names d  grepl     punct      names d     lt -  name2       name1 name2 name3    1    NA    NA    NA   These were examples I had to deal with today  I thought might be worth sharing

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I found colnames   argument easier  https   www rdocumentation org packages base versions 3 6 2 topics row 2Bcolnames  select some column from the data frame  df  lt - data frame df   c   hhid   b1005    b1012 imp    b3004a       and rename the selected column in order   colnames df   lt - c  hhid    income    cost    credit     check the names and the values to be sure  names df  head df

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You could also try  upData  from  Hmisc  package   library Hmisc   trSamp   upData trSamp  rename c sample trainer index  10000     newname2

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library dplyr  rename data  de de y

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You can use the rename vars in the gdata package   library gdata  df  lt - rename vars df  from    oldname   to    newname     This is particularly useful where you have more than one variable name to change or you want to append or pre-pend some text to the variable names  then you can do something like   df  lt - rename vars df  from   c  old1    old2    old3             to   c  new1    new2    new3      For an example of appending text to a subset of variables names see  https   stackoverflow com a 28870000 180892

[r] How to rename a single column in a data.frame?

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