Set Column Names when Using cbind Function in R

In this article, we are going to see how to set the column names when using cbind() function in R Programming language.

Let’s create and combine two vectors for demonstration:

R

# create two vectors with integer and string types
vector1 = c(1,2,3,4,5)

vector2 = c("sravan","bobby",
            "ojsawi","gnanesh",
            "rohith")

# display
print(vector1)
print(vector2)

# combine two vectors using cbind()
print(cbind(vector1, vector2))

Output:

[1] 1 2 3 4 5
[1] "sravan"  "bobby"   "ojsawi"  "gnanesh" "rohith"  
    vector1 vector2  
[1,] "1"     "sravan"  
[2,] "2"     "bobby"  
[3,] "3"     "ojsawi"  
[4,] "4"     "gnanesh"
[5,] "5"     "rohith"

Method 1 : Set column names using colnames() function

colnames() function in R Language is used to set the names to columns of a matrix.

Syntax:
colnames(x) <- value

Parameters:
x: Matrix
value: Vector of names to be set

Example: R program to set the column names using colnames() function.

R

# create two vectors with integer and string types
vector1 = c(1,2,3,4,5)

vector2 = c("sravan","bobby","ojsawi",
            "gnanesh","rohith")

# display
print(vector1)
print(vector2)

# combine two vectors using cbind()
combined = cbind(vector1,vector2)

# Applying colnames
colnames(combined) = c("vector 1", "vector 2")

# display
combined

Output:

Method 2 : Set column names within cbind() function

Here, we have to give column names in the cbind() function itself.

Syntax: cbind(column_name = data1, column_name= data2,………,column_name=data n)

where

1. data is the input data to be combines
2. column_name is the new column name.

Example: R program to set the column name within cbind() function for three vectors

R

# create three vectors with integer and string types
vector1 = c(1,2,3,4,5)

vector2 = c("sravan","bobby","ojsawi",
            "gnanesh","rohith")

vector3 = c(12,34,21,34,51)

# display
print(vector1)
print(vector2)
print(vector3)

# combine three vectors with in  cbind() function
combined = cbind("ID"=vector1,
                 "NAME"=vector2,"AGE"=vector3)

# display
combined

Output: