I have some code and I want to make it easier to update which column in my data it acts on. At the moment it basically does something with one column and I want to make it super easy to change which column that is.
I was hoping to be able to have a little inputs section at the start of the code where I defined the column name as something and then reference that throughout the code instead of having the column name hardcoded throughout the code.
For example, if the column I want to work with is currently in my dataframe and called "Have", I want this line at the start:
Have_column <- "Have"
Then when I want to do something to this column I want to be referring to the Have_column value, such that when I want to change which column the code acts on all I have to do is change the "Have" to a different column name at the start of my code.
But I'm struggling to figure out how to refer to this where I have code like:
df$Have <- as.numeric(as.character(df$Have))
I figure I could do it all this way:
Have_column <- "Have"
df <- df %>% rename(Use := all_of(Have_column))
df$Use <- as.numeric(as.character(df$Use))
But is there a way of referring to the column heading using the Have_column value?
Something like this gets me halfway:
Have_column <- "Have"
df$Use <- as.numeric(as.character(paste0("df$",all_of(Have_column))))
But trying to go the full way with this idea isn't working:
Have_column <- "Have"
paste0("df$",all_of(Have_column)) <- as.numeric(as.character(paste0("df$",all_of(Have_column))))
Any ideas welcome!
