Remove Multiple Columns from data.table in R (Example)
In this tutorial, I’ll illustrate how to delete several data.table variables in R.
The content of the tutorial is structured like this:
Let’s dive right into the example…
Example Data & Packages
We first need to install and load the data.table package, if we want to use the functions that are contained in the package:
install.packages("data.table") # Install & load data.table library("data.table")
Now, we can create a data.table as example data as shown below:
data <- data.table(x1 = letters[1:4], # Example data.table x2 = 3, x3 = 1:4) data # Print data.table # x1 x2 x3 # 1: a 3 1 # 2: b 3 2 # 3: c 3 3 # 4: d 3 4
As you can see based on the previous RStudio console output, our example data consists of four rows and three variables.
Example: Removing Several Variables from data.table in One Line of Code
This Example illustrates how to delete two variables from a data.table simultaneously. Consider the following R code:
data[ ,`:=`(x1 = NULL, x2 = NULL)] # Remove columns data # Print updated data.table # x3 # 1: 1 # 2: 2 # 3: 3 # 4: 4
As you can see based on the previous output, our updated data.table contains only the column x3. The variables x1 and x were removed.
Video, Further Resources & Summary
Have a look at the following video of my YouTube channel. In the video, I explain the examples of this tutorial in RStudio:
The YouTube video will be added soon.
Furthermore, you could read the related articles on https://statisticsglobe.com/.
- Apply Function to data.table in Each Specified Column
- Remove Data Frame Columns by Name
- Introduction to the data.table Package
- The R Programming Language
Summary: In this tutorial, I showed how to get rid of multiple data.table columns in R. Let me know in the comments section, if you have any additional questions.
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