How to drop columns with column names that contain specific string?

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 name <- c("Jon", "Bill", "Maria")
 agenn <- c(23, 41, 32)
 agelk <- c(23, 41, 32)
 agepm <- c(23, 41, 32)
 df <- data.frame(name, age,agelk,agepm)
 print (df)

I would like to drop columns with column names that contain c("epm","enn","jkk")

r
4 Answers

Using dplyr:

library(dplyr)

df %>%
  select(-contains(c("epm", "enn", "jkk")))
#>    name agelk
#> 1   Jon    23
#> 2  Bill    41
#> 3 Maria    32
user_119568730

Using data.table and %like%

df[,!colnames(df) %like% paste0(c("epm","enn","jkkk"),collapse="|")]
   name agelk
1   Jon    23
2  Bill    41
3 Maria    32
user_148496860

Using matches

library(dplyr)
df %>%
   select(-matches('epm|enn|jkk'))
#   name agelk
#1   Jon    23
#2  Bill    41
#3 Maria    32
user_37322710

Here a base R approach:

First of all your code ;)

name <- c("Jon", "Bill", "Maria")
agenn <- c(23, 41, 32)
agelk <- c(23, 41, 32)
agepm <- c(23, 41, 32)
df <- data.frame(name, agenn,agelk,agepm)

Create your values do drop:

drop_val <- c("epm","enn","jkk")

You can check with grepl if a string exists in another. So let's loop for every string you want to remove and compare if it exists in colnames(df). Well and if none of your strings fits, you keep them -> otherwise remove.

 df[!grepl(paste0(drop_val,collapse="|" ),names(df))]

Output:

   name agelk
1   Jon    23
2  Bill    41
3 Maria    32
user_97834330
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