4

I've used curly-curly with group_by and summarise as described in the rlang announcement. But I can't get it to work when mutating a variable in place. What's the best way to do this currently with dplyr?

Say I want to supply an unquoted column name and have it mutated, here's a toy example function that doesn't work:

my_fun <- function(dat, var_name){
  dat %>%
    mutate({{var_name}} = 1)
}

my_fun(mtcars, cyl)

What should that mutate line be to change any column in mtcars to be a constant?

Sam Firke
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1 Answers1

5

You need to use the assignment operator (:=) if you want to use the curly-curly to specify a name on the left hand side of an assignment in mutate:

my_fun <- function(dat, var_name){
  dat %>%
    mutate({{var_name}} := 1)
}

Which allows:

my_fun(mtcars, cyl)
#>     mpg cyl  disp  hp drat    wt  qsec vs am gear carb
#> 1  21.0   1 160.0 110 3.90 2.620 16.46  0  1    4    4
#> 2  21.0   1 160.0 110 3.90 2.875 17.02  0  1    4    4
#> 3  22.8   1 108.0  93 3.85 2.320 18.61  1  1    4    1
#> 4  21.4   1 258.0 110 3.08 3.215 19.44  1  0    3    1
#> 5  18.7   1 360.0 175 3.15 3.440 17.02  0  0    3    2
#> 6  18.1   1 225.0 105 2.76 3.460 20.22  1  0    3    1
#> 7  14.3   1 360.0 245 3.21 3.570 15.84  0  0    3    4
#> 8  24.4   1 146.7  62 3.69 3.190 20.00  1  0    4    2
#> 9  22.8   1 140.8  95 3.92 3.150 22.90  1  0    4    2
#> 10 19.2   1 167.6 123 3.92 3.440 18.30  1  0    4    4
#> 11 17.8   1 167.6 123 3.92 3.440 18.90  1  0    4    4
#> 12 16.4   1 275.8 180 3.07 4.070 17.40  0  0    3    3
#> 13 17.3   1 275.8 180 3.07 3.730 17.60  0  0    3    3
#> 14 15.2   1 275.8 180 3.07 3.780 18.00  0  0    3    3
#> 15 10.4   1 472.0 205 2.93 5.250 17.98  0  0    3    4
#> 16 10.4   1 460.0 215 3.00 5.424 17.82  0  0    3    4
#> 17 14.7   1 440.0 230 3.23 5.345 17.42  0  0    3    4
#> 18 32.4   1  78.7  66 4.08 2.200 19.47  1  1    4    1
#> 19 30.4   1  75.7  52 4.93 1.615 18.52  1  1    4    2
#> 20 33.9   1  71.1  65 4.22 1.835 19.90  1  1    4    1
#> 21 21.5   1 120.1  97 3.70 2.465 20.01  1  0    3    1
#> 22 15.5   1 318.0 150 2.76 3.520 16.87  0  0    3    2
#> 23 15.2   1 304.0 150 3.15 3.435 17.30  0  0    3    2
#> 24 13.3   1 350.0 245 3.73 3.840 15.41  0  0    3    4
#> 25 19.2   1 400.0 175 3.08 3.845 17.05  0  0    3    2
#> 26 27.3   1  79.0  66 4.08 1.935 18.90  1  1    4    1
#> 27 26.0   1 120.3  91 4.43 2.140 16.70  0  1    5    2
#> 28 30.4   1  95.1 113 3.77 1.513 16.90  1  1    5    2
#> 29 15.8   1 351.0 264 4.22 3.170 14.50  0  1    5    4
#> 30 19.7   1 145.0 175 3.62 2.770 15.50  0  1    5    6
#> 31 15.0   1 301.0 335 3.54 3.570 14.60  0  1    5    8
#> 32 21.4   1 121.0 109 4.11 2.780 18.60  1  1    4    2
Allan Cameron
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