Gentle way for removing named variable from dataframe [duplicate]

Question

Is there possibility to write function f(), which I can use for subsetting columns set which we can use strictly like this : data[, f(c("var1", "var2", "var3"))] without using data as argument,f() could be something like :

f <- function(data_frame, minus_colnames)
     return colnames(data_frame)[which(!colnames(data_frame)%in%minus_colnames)]

but can we somehow call f without explicitly pointing to data dataframe like :

data[, f(c("var1", "var2", "var3"))]

not like

data[, f(data, c("var1", "var2", "var3"))] (and without dplyr) ?

That would be most suitable syntax for me

Also probably using setdiff(names(data), c("var1", "var2", "var3")) — David Arenburg
– David Arenburg, Commented Nov 11, 2015 at 13:13

Ben Bolker · Accepted Answer · 2015-11-11 13:18:11Z

4

subset(data, select= -c(var1, var2, var3))

or

data[,!names(data) %in% c("var1","var2","var3"))]

or as @DavidArenburg suggests

setdiff(names(data), c("var1", "var2", "var3")

dplyr::select is another option; I'm sure there are data.table solutions too.

edited Nov 11, 2015 at 13:18

answered Nov 11, 2015 at 13:11

Ben Bolker

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2 Comments

talat Over a year ago

The dplyr option could be select(data, -num_range("var", 1:3)), for example. (+1)

Pierre L Over a year ago

To finish it off dt[, !paste0('var', 1:3), with=F] and dt[, paste0('var', 1:3) := NULL] for data.table

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