R How to Create a List of All Columns Except One (2 Examples)

This page shows how to return a vector of variable names in R programming.

Creation of Example Data

data(iris)                                                   # Loading example data frame to R
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

Example 1: Using colnames() Function to Construct Vector that Contains All Variable Names Except One

my_names <- colnames(iris)[colnames(iris) != "Sepal.Width"]  # Return colnames
my_names                                                     # Show vector of colnames
# "Sepal.Length" "Petal.Length" "Petal.Width"  "Species"

Example 2: Dropping Data Frame Variable Based On Vector of Names

iris_small <- iris[ , my_names]                              # Removing column
head(iris_small)                                             # Show updated iris data
#   Sepal.Length Petal.Length Petal.Width Species
# 1          5.1          1.4         0.2  setosa
# 2          4.9          1.4         0.2  setosa
# 3          4.7          1.3         0.2  setosa
# 4          4.6          1.5         0.2  setosa
# 5          5.0          1.4         0.2  setosa
# 6          5.4          1.7         0.4  setosa

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Fill out this field
Fill out this field
Please enter a valid email address.
You need to agree with the terms to proceed

Menu
Top