Automatically generate new variable names using dplyr mutate

Question

I would like to create variable names dynamically while using dplyr; although, I’d be fine with a non-dplyr solution as well.

For Example:

data(iris)         


        

Answer 1

Since you're also happy with a non-dplyr, try this:

lagger <- function(x, n) c(rep(NA,n), head(x,-n) )
iris[paste0("lag_", names(iris) )] <- lapply(iris, lagger, n=1)

head(iris,2)[-(1:5)]
#  lag_Sepal.Length lag_Sepal.Width lag_Petal.Length lag_Petal.Width lag_Species
#1               NA              NA               NA              NA          NA
#2              5.1             3.5              1.4             0.2           1