Tips for Rearranging Columns in R

Tips for Rearranging Columns in R, you might frequently want to reorder the columns in a data frame.

The select() function from the dplyr package, fortunately, makes this simple to accomplish.

library(dplyr)

This tutorial shows several examples of how to use this function in practice using the following data frame.

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Let’s create a data frame

df <- data.frame(player = c('P1', 'P2', 'P3', 'P4'),
                 points = c(124, 229, 313, 415),
                 result = c('Win', 'Loss', 'Win', 'Loss'))

Now we can view the data frame

df

   player points result
1     P1    124    Win
2     P2    229   Loss
3     P3    313    Win
4     P4    415   Loss

Example 1: A Column is Moved to the First Position

How to shift a particular column in a data frame to the front position is demonstrated by the code below.

Let’s move column ‘result’ to the first position

df %>% select(result, everything())

   result player points
1    Win     P1    124
2   Loss     P2    229
3    Win     P3    313
4   Loss     P4    415

This code instructs dplyr to initially select the points column before including every other column.

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Example 2: Move a Column to the Last Position

How to relocate a particular column in a data frame to the last location is demonstrated by the code below:

relocate ‘player’ column to last place

df %>% select(-player, player)

   points result player
1    124    Win     P1
2    229   Loss     P2
3    313    Win     P3
4    415   Loss     P4

Dplyr is instructed by this code to first choose all columns other than the player column, then to select the player column once more.

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The player column is thus moved to the bottom of the data frame as a result of this.

Example 3: Rearrange Several Columns

The code that follows demonstrates how to sequentially reorder multiple columns.

df %>% select(points, result, player)

   points result player
1    124    Win     P1
2    229   Loss     P2
3    313    Win     P3
4    415   Loss     P4

Example 4: Alphabetically reorder the columns

The code below demonstrates how to alphabetically arrange the columns.

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alphabetize the columns

df %>% select(order(colnames(.)))

   player points result
1     P1    124    Win
2     P2    229   Loss
3     P3    313    Win
4     P4    415   Loss

Example 5: Reverse Column Order

Reversing the column order in a data frame is demonstrated by the code below.

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column order in reverse

df %>% select(result:player, everything())

   result points player
1    Win    124     P1
2   Loss    229     P2
3    Win    313     P3
4   Loss    415     P4