[r] Change the Blank Cells to "NA"

As of (dplyr 1.0.0) we can use across()

For all columns:

dat <- dat %>%
   mutate(across(everything(), ~ifelse(.=="", NA, as.character(.))))

For individual columns:

dat <- dat %>%
   mutate(across(c("Age","Gender"), ~ifelse(.=="", NA, as.character(.))))

As of (dplyr 0.8.0 above) the way this should be written has changed. Before it was, funs() in .funs (funs(name = f(.)). Instead of funs, now we use list (list(name = ~f(.)))

Note that there is also a much simpler way to list the column names ! (both the name of the column and column index work)

dat <- dat %>%
mutate_at(.vars = c("Age","Gender"),
    .funs = list(~ifelse(.=="", NA, as.character(.))))

Original Answer:

You can also use mutate_at in dplyr

dat <- dat %>%
mutate_at(vars(colnames(.)),
        .funs = funs(ifelse(.=="", NA, as.character(.))))

Select individual columns to change:

dat <- dat %>%
mutate_at(vars(colnames(.)[names(.) %in% c("Age","Gender")]),
        .funs = funs(ifelse(.=="", NA, as.character(.))))