R - Change column name using get() - r

Question

I have several data.frames in my Global Environment that I need to merge. Many of the data.frames have identical column names. I want to append a suffix to each column that marks its originating data.frame. Because I have many data.frames, I wanted to automate the process as in the following example.
df1 <- data.frame(id = 1:5,x = LETTERS[1:5])
df2 <- data.frame(id = 1:5,x = LETTERS[6:10])
obj <- ls()
for(o in obj){
s <- sub('df','',eval(o))
names(get(o))[-1] <- paste0(names(get(o))[-1],'.',s)
}
# Error in get(o) <- `*vtmp*` : could not find function "get<-"'
But the individual pieces of the assignment work fine:
names(get(o))[-1]
# [1] "x"
paste0(names(get(o))[-1],'.',s)
# [1] "x.1"
I've used get in a similar way to write.csveach object to a file.
for(o in obj){
write.csv(get(o),file = paste0(o,'.csv'),row.names = F)
}
Any ideas why it's not working in the assignment to change the column names?

Answer 1

The error "could not find function get<-" is R telling you that you can't use <- to update a "got" object. You could probably use assign, but this code is already difficult enough to read. The better solution is to use a list.
From your example:
df1 <- data.frame(id = 1:5,x = LETTERS[1:5])
df2 <- data.frame(id = 1:5,x = LETTERS[6:10])
# put your data frames in a list
df_names = ls(pattern = "df[0-9]+")
df_names # make sure this is the objects you want
# [1] "df1" "df2"
df_list = mget(df_names)
# now we can use a simple for loop (or lapply, mapply, etc.)
for(i in seq_along(df_list)) {
names(df_list[[i]])[-1] =
paste(names(df_list[[i]])[-1],
sub('df', '', names(df_list)[i]),
sep = "."
)
}
# and the column names of the data frames in the list have been updated
df_list
# $df1
# id x.1
# 1 1 A
# 2 2 B
# 3 3 C
# 4 4 D
# 5 5 E
#
# $df2
# id x.2
# 1 1 F
# 2 2 G
# 3 3 H
# 4 4 I
# 5 5 J
It's also now easy to merge them:
Reduce(f = merge, x = df_list)
# id x.1 x.2
# 1 1 A F
# 2 2 B G
# 3 3 C H
# 4 4 D I
# 5 5 E J
For more discussion and examples, see How do I make a list of data frames?

Answer 2

Using setnames from library(data.table) you can do
for(o in obj) {
oldnames = names(get(o))[-1]
newnames = paste0(oldnames, ".new")
setnames(get(o), oldnames, newnames)
}

Answer 3

You can use eval which evaluate an R expression in a specified environment.
df1 <- data.frame(id = 1:5,x = LETTERS[1:5])
df2 <- data.frame(id = 1:5,x = LETTERS[6:10])
obj <- ls()
for(o in obj) {
s <- sub('df', '', o)
new_name <- paste0(names(get(o))[-1], '.', s)
eval(parse(text = paste0('names(', o, ')[-1] <- ', substitute(new_name))))
}
modify df1 and df2
id x.1
1 1 A
2 2 B
3 3 C
4 4 D
5 5 E