How to rename selected columns using dplyr with new column names as strings

Question

I have the following tibble:

library(tidyverse)
df <- structure(list(Sepal.Length = c(5.1, 4.9, 4.7, 4.6, 5), Sepal.Width = c(3.5, 
3, 3.2, 3.1, 3.6), Pet         


        

Answer 1

If you want to use dplyr's rename function, it would be best to create a named vector / list and call it using the .dots argument in the standard evaluation version:

cols <- c("Sepal.Length", "Petal.Length")
to_app <- ".xxx"
cols <- setNames(cols, paste0(cols, to_app))

df %>% rename_(.dots = cols)

## A tibble: 5 × 3
#  Sepal.Length.xxx Sepal.Width Petal.Length.xxx
#*                               
#1              5.1         3.5              1.4
#2              4.9         3.0              1.4
#3              4.7         3.2              1.3
#4              4.6         3.1              1.5
#5              5.0         3.6              1.4

Note however, that this approach is subject to change with the next version 0.6.0 of dplyr (see e.g. http://blog.rstudio.org/2017/04/13/dplyr-0-6-0-coming-soon/ and http://dplyr.tidyverse.org/articles/programming.html).