Is current_vars() meant for general use or is there a shorthand?

General
1

Assuming I can't use matches() because of this dplyr issue, is this the way I am meant to use select to filter columns by some test on the column name?

select(test, str_subset(current_vars(), "somePattern"))

Specifically, is current_vars for general use? It's listed in the help alongside matches, starts_with etc. but there's no specific documentation of it. I've just used it because it seems to be what the other functions like matches use.

2

If you are using these functions in a package, you should consider the versions in tidyselect instead. The function names are a little different but this package is meant for more general usage.

3

Are they just duplicates then with the idea that they would get deprecated in dplyr? Or do you mean using everything() instead of current_vars()?

It is for a package, but the pattern will be hardcoded, I'm not needing to give the package consumer any control over anything really other than the tibble that is being filtered.

4

Yes current_vars() is meant to create tidyselect helpers and users are encouraged to do so. The next version of dplyr will start to use tidyselect but current_vars() will remain around. We suggest you use tidyselect::peek_vars() once the next dplyr version is out though.

If you're using a selection pattern often it may be nice to extract it in a function:

vars_subset <- function(pattern) {
  str_subset(tidyselect::peek_vars(), pattern)
}

It will work in all selecting functions like dplyr::select() but also tidyr::gather() etc.

1 Like
5

Thanks, that's useful insight. I'll keep an eye out for the new versions. I did find it a bit confusing to know whether to use select_at or select and I still haven't quite understood the difference. Hopefully matches() can get updated to use stringr anyway and then my function will not be required anymore.

6

select() and select_at() are mostly equivalent. The purpose of the latter is mainly to make select_ a complete family. The main difference is that you can pass additional functions to modify the names:

select_at(mtcars, vars(matches("sp"), toupper)
#> # A tibble: 32 x 1
#>     DISP
#>  * <dbl>
#>  1   160
#>  2   160
#>  3   108
#>  4   258
#>  5   360
#>  6   225
#>  7   360
#>  8   147
#>  9   141
#> 10   168
#> # ... with 22 more rows
1 Like
7

It seems that current_vars() may no longer work in select(data, str_subset(current_vars(), pattern)) so I have switched to peek_vars() which works fine.

Not sure what changed as I updated tidyverse but I don't think there was a dplyr update in there. It's possible it was something funny that I did.