I have >100 dataframes loaded into R with column name prefixes in some but not all columns that I would like to remove. In the below example with 3 dataframes, I would like to remove the pattern x__ in the 3 dataframes but keep all the dataframe names and everything else the same. How could this be done?
df1 <- data.frame(`x__a` = rep(3, 5), `x__b` = seq(1, 5, 1), `x__c` = letters[1:5])
df2 <- data.frame(`d` = rep(5, 5), `x__e` = seq(2, 6, 1), `f` = letters[6:10])
df3 <- data.frame(`x__g` = rep(5, 5), `x__h` = seq(2, 6, 1), `i` = letters[6:10])
You could put the data frames in a list and use an anonymous function with gsub.
lst <- mget(ls(pattern='^df\\d$'))
lapply(lst, \(x) setNames(x, gsub('x__', '', names(x))))
# $df1
# a b c
# 1 3 1 a
# 2 3 2 b
# 3 3 3 c
# 4 3 4 d
# 5 3 5 e
#
# $df2
# d e f
# 1 5 2 f
# 2 5 3 g
# 3 5 4 h
# 4 5 5 i
# 5 5 6 j
#
# $df3
# g h i
# 1 5 2 f
# 2 5 3 g
# 3 5 4 h
# 4 5 5 i
# 5 5 6 j
If you have no use of the list, move the changed dfs back into .GlobalEnv using list2env, but I don't recommend it, since it overwrites.
lapply(lst, \(x) setNames(x, gsub('x__', '', names(x)))) |> list2env(.GlobalEnv)