How to Remove a Column by name and index using Dplyr Package in R

Last Updated : 21 Jul, 2021

In this article, we are going to remove columns by name and index in the R programming language using dplyr package.

Dataset in use:

Remove a column by using column name

We can remove a column with select() method by its column name.

Syntax:

select(dataframe,-column_name)

Where, dataframe is the input dataframe and column_name is the name of the column to be removed.

Example: R program to remove a column

# load the library
library(dplyr)

# create dataframe with 3 columns 
# id,name and address
data1=data.frame(id=c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,4,2),
                 
                 name=c('sravan','ojaswi','bobby',
                        'gnanesh','rohith','pinkey',
                        'dhanush','sravan','gnanesh',
                        'ojaswi'),
                 
                 address=c('hyd','hyd','ponnur','tenali',
                           'vijayawada','vijayawada','guntur',
                           'hyd','tenali','hyd'))

# remove name column
print(select(data1,-name))

# remove id column
print(select(data1,-id))

Output:

Remove multiple columns by using column name

We can remove a column with select() method by its column name

Syntax:

select(dataframe,-c(column_name1,column_name2,.,column_name n)

Where, dataframe is the input dataframe and -c(column_names) is the collection of names of the column to be removed.

Example: R program to remove multiple columns

# load the library
library(dplyr)

# create dataframe with 3 columns 
# id,name and address
data1=data.frame(id=c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,4,2),
                 
                 name=c('sravan','ojaswi','bobby',
                        'gnanesh','rohith','pinkey',
                        'dhanush','sravan','gnanesh',
                        'ojaswi'),
                 
                 address=c('hyd','hyd','ponnur','tenali',
                           'vijayawada','vijayawada','guntur',
                           'hyd','tenali','hyd'))

# remove name and id  column
print(select(data1,-c(id,name)))

# remove name and address column
print(select(data1,-c(address,name)))

# remove all column
print(select(data1,-c(address,name,id)))

Output:

Remove a column by using column index

We can remove a column with select() method by its column index/position. Index starts with 1.

Syntax:

select(dataframe,-column_index)

Where, dataframe is the input dataframe and column_index is the position of the column to be removed.

Example: R program to remove particular column

# load the library
library(dplyr)

# create dataframe with 3 columns
# id,name and address
data1=data.frame(id=c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,4,2),
                 
                 name=c('sravan','ojaswi','bobby',
                        'gnanesh','rohith','pinkey',
                        'dhanush','sravan','gnanesh',
                        'ojaswi'),
                 
                 address=c('hyd','hyd','ponnur','tenali',
                           'vijayawada','vijayawada','guntur',
                           'hyd','tenali','hyd'))

# remove name column by its position
print(select(data1,-2))

# remove address column by its position
print(select(data1,-3))

Output:

Remove multiple columns by using column index

We can remove a column with select() method by its column index/position. Index starts with 1.

Syntax:

select(dataframe,-c(column_index1,column_index2,.,column_index n)

Where, dataframe is the input dataframe and c(column_indexes) is the position of the columns to be removed.

Example: R program to remove multiple columns by position

# load the library
library(dplyr)

# create dataframe with 3 columns
# id,name and address
data1=data.frame(id=c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,1,4,2),
                 
                 name=c('sravan','ojaswi','bobby',
                        'gnanesh','rohith','pinkey',
                        'dhanush','sravan','gnanesh',
                        'ojaswi'),
                 
                 address=c('hyd','hyd','ponnur','tenali',
                           'vijayawada','vijayawada','guntur',
                           'hyd','tenali','hyd'))

# remove name and id  columns by
# its position
print(select(data1,-c(1,2)))