How to create an iterative variable name with mutate in a for loop?

Question

I have a loop from 1 to 5 and have to essentially create var1 to var5 within the loop. My current code looks something like

for (i in 1:5) {
  iris <- iris %>%
    mutate(paste0("var_", i) = Sepal.Length + i)
}

However, this returns an error

Error: unexpected '=' in:
"  iris <- iris %>%
    mutate(paste0("var_", i) ="
> }
Error: unexpected '}' in "}"

How can I dynamically name variables within the mutate statement?

Matt · Accepted Answer · 2022-09-30 19:14:05Z

2

for (i in 1:5) {
  iris <- iris %>%
    mutate("{paste0('var_', i)}" := Sepal.Length + i) 
}

This uses syntax from the glue package to dynamically rename.

answered Sep 30, 2022 at 19:14

Matt

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