Delete Variables with Duplicate Column Names in R (Example Code)

In this article, I’ll show how to keep each variable name in a data frame only once in a data frame in the R programming language.

Creation of Example Data

data(iris)                                                       # Construct example data
iris_new <- iris
colnames(iris_new) <- c("A", "A", "B", "B", "C")
head(iris_new)
#     A   A   B   B      C
# 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

Example: Keep Each Column Name Only Once Using duplicated() & colnames() Functions

iris_new_unique <- iris_new[ , !duplicated(colnames(iris_new))]  # Remove duplicate names
head(iris_new_unique)                                            # Display unique data
#     A   B      C
# 1 5.1 1.4 setosa
# 2 4.9 1.4 setosa
# 3 4.7 1.3 setosa
# 4 4.6 1.5 setosa
# 5 5.0 1.4 setosa
# 6 5.4 1.7 setosa

Related Tutorials & Further Resources

Have a look at the following R programming tutorials. They explain similar topics as this article:

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