rename function

Rename columns

rename() changes the names of individual variables using new_name = old_name syntax; rename_with() renames columns using a function.

rename(.data, ...)

rename_with(.data, .fn, .cols = everything(), ...)

Arguments

• .data: A data frame, data frame extension (e.g. a tibble), or a lazy data frame (e.g. from dbplyr or dtplyr). See Methods, below, for more details.

• ...: For rename(): <tidy-select> Use new_name = old_name to rename selected variables.

  For rename_with(): additional arguments passed onto .fn.

• .fn: A function used to transform the selected .cols. Should return a character vector the same length as the input.

• .cols: <tidy-select> Columns to rename; defaults to all columns.

Returns

An object of the same type as .data. The output has the following properties:

• Rows are not affected.
• Column names are changed; column order is preserved.
• Data frame attributes are preserved.
• Groups are updated to reflect new names.

Methods

This function is a generic , which means that packages can provide implementations (methods) for other classes. See the documentation of individual methods for extra arguments and differences in behaviour.

The following methods are currently available in loaded packages: dplyr:::methods_rd("rename") .

Examples

iris <- as_tibble(iris) # so it prints a little nicer
rename(iris, petal_length = Petal.Length)

# Rename using a named vector and `all_of()`
lookup <- c(pl = "Petal.Length", sl = "Sepal.Length")
rename(iris, all_of(lookup))

# If your named vector might contain names that don't exist in the data,
# use `any_of()` instead
lookup <- c(lookup, new = "unknown")
try(rename(iris, all_of(lookup)))
rename(iris, any_of(lookup))

rename_with(iris, toupper)
rename_with(iris, toupper, starts_with("Petal"))
rename_with(iris, ~ tolower(gsub(".", "_", .x, fixed = TRUE)))

# If your renaming function uses `paste0()`, make sure to set
# `recycle0 = TRUE` to ensure that empty selections are recycled correctly
try(rename_with(
  iris,
  ~ paste0("prefix_", .x),
  starts_with("nonexistent")
))

rename_with(
  iris,
  ~ paste0("prefix_", .x, recycle0 = TRUE),
  starts_with("nonexistent")
)

See Also

Other single table verbs: arrange(), filter(), mutate(), reframe(), select(), slice(), summarise()