Order of the Columns

How to remove some columns in tidyr and change the order of columns? You can use the select() function from the dplyr package (also part of the tidyverse) to select specific columns and change their order. Here’s an example:

library(tidyr)
library(dplyr)

# Create sample data
data <- data.frame(
  date = c("2023-03-01", "2023-03-02", "2023-03-03"),
  event = c("West Coast Park parkrun", "East Coast Park parkrun", "Central Park parkrun"),
  distance = c("5km", "10km", "7.5km"),
  participants = c(100, 200, 150)
)

# Select and reorder columns
data %>%
  select(date, participants, event) %>%
  # You can also use drop() to remove columns
  # drop(distance) %>%
  # drop(3) %>%
  # Note that you can use column names or positions to select columns
  # select(1, 4, 2) %>%
  # select(-distance) %>%
  # select(-c(distance, 2)) %>%
  # select(c(date, participants, event)) %>%
  # select(c("date", "participants", "event")) %>%
  # Note that you can chain multiple select() functions to select/reorder multiple times
  select(event, date, participants)

This code selects the date, participants, and event columns from the data dataframe and reorders them in that order using select(). You can remove columns using the drop() function or the negative sign (-) to exclude them. You can also use column names or positions to select columns, as shown in the commented-out examples.

Note that you can chain multiple select() functions to perform multiple selections and reorderings.