How to fix spaces in column names of a data.frame (remove spaces, inject dots)?

Question

After importing a file, I always try try to remove spaces from the column names to make referral to column names easier.

Is there a better way to do this other then

Answer 1

best solution I found so far is

names(ctm2) %<>% stringr::str_replace_all("\\s","_") %>% tolower

credit goes to commenters and other answers