Basic rename column operation

Introduction

If we want to rename columns for a dataframe, use the rename(…) function :

rename(<dataframe>, <new_column_name>=<old_column_name>)

The operation of renaming columns does not modify the current input, instead it returns a new dataframe which is a result of the operation performed.

Procedure

We will be working with a custom dataframe.

 
# package for creating dataframe
library(tibble) 

# tibble or dataframe with column names to rename
df <- tibble(col_old_1 = as.integer(c(1,2,3)), 
             col_old_2 = c(5.0,6.3,9.7), 
             col_old_3 = c("string1", "string2","string3"),
             col_old_4 = c(FALSE, TRUE, FALSE),
             col_old_5 = as.factor(c("A","B","A")),
             )
View(df)

The first few rows are as follows:

We will rename the col_old_1, col_old_2 and col_old_3 columns from the custom dataframe.

Code

 
# refer procedure for definition of df
library(dplyr)

# rename the col_old_1, col_old_2, and col_old_3 columns
results <- dplyr::rename(df, 
                         col_new_1 = col_old_1, 
                         col_new_2 = col_old_2, 
                         col_new_3 = col_old_3)
View(results)

The output of above code is:

Note: When we renamed the columns all the original columns are preserved, if we want to rename columns and drop the other columns refer this.

Conclusion

Thus we have successfully renamed columns for dataframe.

References

• https://r4ds.had.co.nz/