Create empty DataFrame with only column names in R

Last Updated : 05 Apr, 2021

In this article, we are going to create an empty data frame with column names in the R programming language.

The basic syntax for creating a data frame is using data.frame().

Syntax: data.frame(input_data,nrow,ncol)
Parameter:
input_data may be values ot list or vector.
nrow specifies the number of rows
ncol specifies the number of columns.

Steps –

Create an empty dataframe
Define the column names to a variable
Assign that variable to the dataframe.
Display data frame so created

We can assign column names to dataframe by using colnames()

Syntax:

colnames(dataframe_name)

Given below is the implementation using the above approach.

Example 1:

R

# created vector with 5 characters
columns= c("id","names","address","phone","aadhar no") 
  
# pass this vector length to ncol parameter
# and nrow with 0
myData = data.frame(matrix(nrow = 0, ncol = length(columns))) 
  
# assign column names
colnames(myData) = columns
  
# display
print(myData)

Output:

[1] id names address phone aadhar no

<0 rows> (or 0-length row.names)

If we specify nrow parameter with morethan 0, it will take NA as that many rows.

Example 2:

R

# created vector with 5 characters
columns= c("id","names","address","phone","aadhar no") 
  
# pass this vector length to ncol parameter 
# and nrow with 1
myData = data.frame(matrix(nrow=1, ncol = length(columns))) 
  
# assign column names
colnames(myData) = columns
  
# display
print(myData)
  
# pass this vector length to ncol parameter and 
# nrow with 6
myData = data.frame(matrix(nrow=6, ncol = length(columns))) 
  
# assign column names
colnames(myData) = columns
  
# display
print(myData)

Output:

id names address phone aadhar no
1 NA NA NA NA NA
id names address phone aadhar no
1 NA NA NA NA NA
2 NA NA NA NA NA
3 NA NA NA NA NA
4 NA NA NA NA NA
5 NA NA NA NA NA
6 NA NA NA NA NA

My Personal Notes

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