How to select range of columns in a dataframe based on their name and not their indexes?

Question

In a pandas dataframe created like this:

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np

df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randint(10, size=(6, 6)),
                  colu         


        

Answer 1

A solution using dplyr package but you need to specify the row you want to select before hand

rowName2Match <- c("r1", "r5")

df1 <- df %>% 
  select(matches("2"):matches("4")) %>% 
  add_rownames() %>% 
  mutate(idRow = match(rowname, rowName2Match)) %>% 
  slice(which(!is.na(idRow))) %>% 
  select(-idRow)
df1

> df1
Source: local data frame [2 x 4]

  rowname    c2    c3    c4
      
1      r1     2     3     4
2      r5     6     7     8