How to interpret "." as a variable and not as the placeholder using magrittr's forward-pipe operator

Question

I would like to create a magrittr pipe chain for the nested function call below which produces the exact same output.

The following returns a data frame with columns my_names and Freq.

my_names <- c('John', 'Joe', 'Jane', 'John', 'John', 'Jane')

test_df <- as.data.frame.table(sort(table(my_names), decreasing = TRUE))

   my_names Freq
1     John    3
2     Jane    2
3      Joe    1

Using magrittr the pipe chain below returns a data frame with columns . and Freq

library(magrittr)

test_df <- my_names %>% table %>% sort(decreasing = TRUE) %>% as.data.frame.table 

   . Freq
1 John    3
2 Jane    2
3  Joe    1

Adding %>% dplyr::rename(my_names = .) won't work because . is interpreted as the placeholder and not as the column name.

To produce the same output as in the nested function call I need to use an additional function call: test_df <- dplyr::rename(test_df, my_names = .)

Is there a way to tell %>% to interpret . as a variable name and not as the placeholder in the subsequent call?

Answer 1

This is very, very late, but you can use the rename_ version (with the underscore) and the string ".". This avoids nonstandard evaluation and hence works around %>% substituting ..

test_df <- my_names %>% table %>% sort(decreasing = TRUE) %>% as.data.frame.table %>%
    rename_(my_names=".")

#  my_names Freq
#1     John    3
#2     Jane    2
#3      Joe    1