Numbers as column name in tibbles: problem when using select()

Question

I am trying to select some column by name, and the names are numbers. This is the code:

df2 <- df1 %>% select(`Year`, all_of(append(list1, list2))) %>%

I get this error:

Error: Can't subset columns that don't exist. x Locations 61927, 169014, 75671, 27059, 225963, etc. don't exist. i There are only 5312 columns.

I think the error is due to column names being numbers. How do I solve it? (I want to keep the column name as numbers)

unfortunately I cannot, what do you think the problem might be? — randomwalker, Sep 25 '21 at 17:23
If you can't share your actual data you can create a fake dataset which is similar to your actual data to make the question reproducible. — Ronak Shah, Sep 26 '21 at 02:07

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Sep 25 '21 at 17:52

1

We may use any_of with paste so that if there are numeric values as column names, it still work and if some of them are missing too, it would not throw an error

library(dplyr)
df1 %>% 
    select(Year, any_of(paste(c(list1, list2))))

answered Sep 25 '21 at 17:52

akrun

874,273
37
540
662

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Sep 25 '21 at 17:23

If you insert a number in select it will use as position, buy you can use the number as characters.

Example

library(dplyr)

df <-  tibble(`2020` = NA,`2021` = NA, "var" = NA)

df

# A tibble: 1 x 3
  `2020` `2021` var  
  <lgl>  <lgl>  <lgl>
1 NA     NA     NA

Using number inside select

I will give an error, since there just 3 variables, and if you use 2020 will search the 2020th column.

df %>% 
  select(2020)

Erro: Can't subset columns that don't exist. x Location 2020 doesn't exist. i There are only 3 columns.

Using number as string inside select

df %>% 
  select("2020")

# A tibble: 1 x 1
  `2020`
  <lgl> 
1 NA

OK so how do transform the list of numbers in strings? – randomwalker Sep 25 '21 at 17:25 — randomwalker, Sep 25 '21 at 17:25
You can create a vector with them, and use `as.character` – Vinícius Félix Sep 25 '21 at 17:26 — Vinícius Félix, Sep 25 '21 at 17:26

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 25 '21 at 18:46

0

You can clean the column names using the janitor package.

df1 <- janitor::clean_names(df1)

answered Sep 25 '21 at 18:46

superboreen

59
4

Numbers as column name in tibbles: problem when using select()

3 Answers3

Example

Using number inside select

Using number as string inside select