dplyr::select()

select(.data, ...)

select() is a dplyr verb that subsets columns from a data frame or tibble.

Syntax

select(.data, ...)

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
.data	data.frame/tibble	—	A data frame or tibble to select from
...		—	Column selections using names, positions, or helpers

Examples

Basic column selection

Select specific columns by name:

library(dplyr)

df <- tibble(
  id = 1:5,
  name = c("Alice", "Bob", "Charlie", "Diana", "Eve"),
  age = c(25, 30, 35, 28, 32),
  salary = c(50000, 60000, 55000, 65000, 58000)
)

# Select two columns
select(df, name, age)

Using column positions

Select columns by their numeric positions:

# Select first and third columns
select(df, 1, 3)

Selection helpers

Use helper functions to select columns by pattern:

# Select columns that start with "s"
select(df, starts_with("s"))

# Select columns that contain "a"
select(df, contains("a"))

Renaming columns

Use = to rename while selecting:

select(df, ID = id, Employee = name)

Using everything() helper

Move specific columns to the front while keeping all others:

select(df, salary, everything())

Negative selection

Exclude specific columns using -:

select(df, -salary)

Common Patterns

Pipeline with select()

select() shines in dplyr pipelines:

df %>%
  select(name, age) %>%
  filter(age > 28) %>%
  head(3)

Select numeric columns

# Select all numeric columns
df %>% select(where(is.numeric))

Reorder columns

Use select() to reorder columns for better readability:

select(df, name, age, salary, id)

See Also

• dplyr::filter
• dplyr::mutate
• dplyr::arrange