Renaming columns of a dataset by those of another in R
2 min readJan 2, 2024
Renaming columns in a dataset is a common data manipulation task in various data analysis projects. Sometimes, we may want to rename columns in one dataset using the column names from another dataset, especially when working with smaller subsets of a large dataset.
In this blog post, we see how to rename columns of a dataset by those of another dataset using the names<- function.
Here's an example:
> head(iris)
Sepal.Length Sepal.Width Petal.Length Petal.Width Species
1 5.1 3.5 1.4 0.2 setosa
2 4.9 3.0 1.4 0.2 setosa
3 4.7 3.2 1.3 0.2 setosa
4 4.6 3.1 1.5 0.2 setosa
5 5.0 3.6 1.4 0.2 setosa
6 5.4 3.9 1.7 0.4 setosa#let's rename
names(iris)[2:4] <- names(mtcars)[5:7]
> head(iris)
Sepal.Length drat wt qsec Species
1 5.1 3.5 1.4 0.2 setosa
2 4.9 3.0 1.4 0.2 setosa
3 4.7 3.2 1.3 0.2 setosa
4 4.6 3.1 1.5 0.2 setosa
5 5.0 3.6 1.4 0.2 setosa
6 5.4 3.9 1.7 0.4 setosaLet’s do the reverse to rename columns of mtcars by iris:
> names(iris)[2:4] -> names(mtcars)[5:7]
> head(mtcars)
mpg cyl disp hp Sepal.Width Petal.Length
Mazda RX4 21.0 6 160 110 3.90 2.620
Mazda RX4 Wag 21.0 6 160 110 3.90 2.875
Datsun 710 22.8 4 108 93 3.85 2.320
Hornet 4 Drive 21.4 6 258 110 3.08 3.215
Hornet Sportabout 18.7 8 360 175 3.15 3.440
Valiant 18.1 6 225 105 2.76 3.460
Petal.Width vs am gear carb
Mazda RX4 16.46 0 1 4 4
Mazda RX4 Wag 17.02 0 1 4 4
Datsun 710 18.61 1 1 4 1
Hornet 4 Drive 19.44 1 0 3 1
Hornet Sportabout 17.02 0 0 3 2
Valiant 20.22 1 0 3 1
