Drop data frame columns by name

Question

I have a number of columns that I would like to remove from a data frame. I know that we can delete them individually using something like:

df$x <- NULL
<         


        

Answer 1

Dplyr Solution

I doubt this will get much attention down here, but if you have a list of columns that you want to remove, and you want to do it in a dplyr chain I use one_of() in the select clause:

Here is a simple, reproducable example:

undesired <- c('mpg', 'cyl', 'hp')

mtcars <- mtcars %>%
  select(-one_of(undesired))

Documentation can be found by running ?one_of or here:

http://genomicsclass.github.io/book/pages/dplyr_tutorial.html