I have a dataset from a Qualtrics survey that has a form-field formatted question that split the responses into multiple columns, all identically named with the question text except for the form field text (ie. "What is your contact information? - Name"; "What is your contact information - Phone Number", etc.). I want to rename them by removing the text preceding the dash and just leaving the form field names.
Since they're all named with the same naming conventions, I figured that the most efficient method would be to use gsub() to replace "What is your contact information - " with a blank. I'm struggling to figure out the right code that will rename the columns (not create new ones) by identifying the ones with the pattern in their names, using contains(), case_when(), if_any(), and other relative functions. Everytime I try a different combination with gsub, I get errors like the one below. I tried to define the colnames as the X in gsub() but struck out. Where am I going wrong?
# Attempted Code
## Reproducible Example ##
test<- structure(list(`What is your contact info? - Name` = c("John",
"Jacob", "Jess"), `What is your contact info? - City` = c("Austin",
"Helena", "Albany"), `What is your contact info? - State` = c("Texas",
"Montana", "New York"), Gender = c("Male", "Non-Binary", "Female"
), Group = 1:3), class = c("tbl_df", "tbl", "data.frame"), row.names = c(NA,
-3L))
## Attempt 1
data<- test%>%
mutate(across(contains("What is your contact info? - "),
gsub("What is your contact info? - ","")))
Error in `mutate()`:
ℹ In argument: `across(...)`.
Caused by error in `gsub()`:
! argument "x" is missing, with no default
Error in `mutate()`:
ℹ In argument: `across(...)`.
Caused by error in `across()`:
! `.fns` must be a function, a formula, or a list of functions/formulas.
## Attempt 2
data<- test%>%
rename(contains("What is your contact info? - "),
gsub("What is your contact info? - ",""))
Error in `rename()`:
ℹ In argument: `gsub("What is your contact info? - ", "")`.
Caused by error in `gsub()`:
! argument "x" is missing, with no default
Run `rlang::last_trace()` to see where the error occurred.
## Attempt 3
data<- test%>%
rename(setNames(paste0(names(.)), gsub("What is your contact info? - ","",names(.))))
## No error code, but the names of the columns weren't changed ##
You should use fixed = TRUE, otherwise ? in the pattern will be treated as a optional quantifier in regex
test %>%
rename_with(~ gsub("What is your contact info? - ", "", .x, fixed = TRUE), contains("What is your contact info? - "))
or even shorter (with matches instead of contains)
test %>%
rename_with(~ gsub(".*- ", "", .x), matches(".*- "))
such that
# A tibble: 3 × 5
Name City State Gender Group
<chr> <chr> <chr> <chr> <int>
1 John Austin Texas Male 1
2 Jacob Helena Montana Non-Binary 2
3 Jess Albany New York Female 3