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")