Adding column if it does not exist

Question

I have a bunch of data frames with different variables. I want to read them into R and add columns to those that are short of a few variables so that they all have a common

Answer 1

You can bind columns of the new data.frame with a fake complete data.frame filled with NA, rename the duplicated columns, and then filter only the original names.

# your default complete vector of col names
standard.variables = names(mtcars)
# prep
default=mtcars %>% mutate_all(.funs=function(x) NA)
# treat with a data.frame missing 3 columns
test=mtcars %>% select(-mpg, -disp, -am)
bind_cols(test, default) %>% setNames(make.names(names(.), unique=TRUE)) %>% 
  select_(.dots=standard.variables) %>% head(2)
####    mpg cyl disp  hp drat    wt  qsec vs am gear carb
#### 1  NA   6   NA 110  3.9 2.620 16.46  0 NA    4    4
#### 2  NA   6   NA 110  3.9 2.875 17.02  0 NA    4    4