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I want to extract the column names that match a certain string value.

This link has a whole set of answers on how to select columns:

#  Data
df <- data.frame( ABC_1 = runif(3),
            ABC_2 = runif(3),
            XYZ_1 = runif(3),
            XYZ_2 = runif(3) )

#      ABC_1     ABC_2     XYZ_1     XYZ_2
#1 0.3792645 0.3614199 0.9793573 0.7139381
#2 0.1313246 0.9746691 0.7276705 0.0126057
#3 0.7282680 0.6518444 0.9531389 0.9673290

#  Use grepl
df[ , grepl( "ABC" , names( df ) ) ]
#      ABC_1     ABC_2
#1 0.3792645 0.3614199
#2 0.1313246 0.9746691
#3 0.7282680 0.6518444

#  grepl returns logical vector like this which is what we use to subset columns
grepl( "ABC" , names( df ) )
#[1]  TRUE  TRUE FALSE FALSE

However these answers all make use of sub-setting with a logical vector TRUE/FALSE.

This has to be very easy, but what if I just want the column names, without subsetting?

Desired output:

output <- c("ABC_1", "ABC_2")
Tom
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