empty string as column name in tibble

Question

tibble::tibble(`` = 1:10)

Error: attempt to use zero-length variable name

tibble::tibble("" = 1:10)

Error: attempt to use zero-length variable name

How can I get around this? I need to have a column with precisely "" as the name.

Answer 1

My first thought is that this sounds like a report-representation thing, since one generally doesn't need nameless columns while developing or working with data. In that regard, I suggest you look at changing names in whatever reporting system you might be using (knitr, kableExtra, etc).

Having said that, R is not going to let you define a zero-length column name, but it'll let you update it later:

setNames(data.frame(" "=1),"")
#    
# 1 1
setNames(tibble(" "=1),"")
# # A tibble: 1 x 1
#      ``
#   <dbl>
# 1     1

Answer 2

This can be achieved by directly modifying the names attribute of a tibble, though it's not a recommended practice. Do something like this:

attr(df, "names") <- c("", "cyl", "disp", "hp", "drat", "wt", "qsec", "vs", "am", "gear", "carb")

Tested with this dataset

df <- tibble::as_tibble(mtcars)

# A tibble: 32 x 11
     mpg   cyl  disp    hp  drat    wt  qsec    vs    am  gear  carb
   <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
 1  21       6  160    110  3.9   2.62  16.5     0     1     4     4
 2  21       6  160    110  3.9   2.88  17.0     0     1     4     4
 3  22.8     4  108     93  3.85  2.32  18.6     1     1     4     1
 4  21.4     6  258    110  3.08  3.22  19.4     1     0     3     1
 5  18.7     8  360    175  3.15  3.44  17.0     0     0     3     2
 6  18.1     6  225    105  2.76  3.46  20.2     1     0     3     1
 7  14.3     8  360    245  3.21  3.57  15.8     0     0     3     4
 8  24.4     4  147.    62  3.69  3.19  20       1     0     4     2
 9  22.8     4  141.    95  3.92  3.15  22.9     1     0     4     2
10  19.2     6  168.   123  3.92  3.44  18.3     1     0     4     4
# ... with 22 more rows

Output

# A tibble: 32 x 11
      ``   cyl  disp    hp  drat    wt  qsec    vs    am  gear  carb
   <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
 1  21       6  160    110  3.9   2.62  16.5     0     1     4     4
 2  21       6  160    110  3.9   2.88  17.0     0     1     4     4
 3  22.8     4  108     93  3.85  2.32  18.6     1     1     4     1
 4  21.4     6  258    110  3.08  3.22  19.4     1     0     3     1
 5  18.7     8  360    175  3.15  3.44  17.0     0     0     3     2
 6  18.1     6  225    105  2.76  3.46  20.2     1     0     3     1
 7  14.3     8  360    245  3.21  3.57  15.8     0     0     3     4
 8  24.4     4  147.    62  3.69  3.19  20       1     0     4     2
 9  22.8     4  141.    95  3.92  3.15  22.9     1     0     4     2
10  19.2     6  168.   123  3.92  3.44  18.3     1     0     4     4
# ... with 22 more rows