You are currently viewing R – Create Empty DataFrame with Column Names?

Let’s see how to create an empty DataFrame with column names in the R programming language by using data.frame() function. Sometimes, you would be required to assign a column name while creating a DataFrame or assigning names right after creating it.

Here, I will cover several examples of creating an empty DataFrame with column names.

1. Quick Examples of Creating an Empty DataFrame with Column Names in R

Following are quick examples of how to create an empty DataFrame with column names in R.


# Example 1 
# Create a Empty DataFrame with 0 rows and n columns
columns = c("id","name","dob") 
df = data.frame(matrix(nrow = 0, ncol = length(columns))) 
colnames(df) = columns
df

# Example 2 
df2 = data.frame(id=numeric(0),name=character(0),dob=character(0))
df2

# Example 3 
df3 = data.frame(id=NA, name=NA, dob=NA)[numeric(0), ]
df3

2. Create an Empty DataFrame with Column Names

We are often required to create an empty DataFrame with column names and R provides several ways to achieve this. In this section, I will show different examples of how to create a DataFrame with column names in the R programming language.

2.1 Using matrix() & data.frame() to create DataFrame with Column Names

Since we need column names on DataFrame, let’s create a vector with column names first, c() is used to create a Vector in R. Now, let’s create an empty DataFrame by using the data.frame() function. Finally, print the DataFrame and check if it is really created empty with column names.


# Create a Vector with Columns
columns = c("id","name","dob") 

#Create a Empty DataFrame with 0 rows and n columns
df = data.frame(matrix(nrow = 0, ncol = length(columns))) 

# Assign column names
colnames(df) = columns

# print DataFrame
print(df)

# Output
#[1] id   name dob 
#<0 rows> (or 0-length row.names)

# Display Dimension
dim(df)
# Output
# [1] 0 3

As you see above, our DataFrame has 0 rows with 3 columns id, name and dob.

2.2 Create data.frame using Zero-Length Variables

You can also create a DataFrame with column names by using data.frame() and by using zero-length variables.


# Another way
df2 = data.frame(id=numeric(0),name=character(0),dob=character(0))
print(df2)

# Output
#[1] id   name dob 
#<0 rows> (or 0-length row.names)

2.3 Using NA Variables

Finally, let’s assign a NA to columns in order to create an empty DataFrame with column names.


# Create Empty DataFrame with column names
df3 = data.frame(id=NA, name=NA, dob=NA)[numeric(0), ]
print(df3)

# Output
#[1] id   name dob 
#<0 rows> (or 0-length row.names)

3. Create DataFrame with Column Names in R

Now let’s see an example of how to create a R DataFrame with column names.


# Create DataFrame
df <- data.frame(
  id = c(10,11,12,13),
  name = c('sai','ram','deepika','sahithi'),
  dob = as.Date(c('1990-10-02','1981-3-24','1987-6-14','1985-8-16'))
)

# Print DataFrame
df

Yields below output.


# Output
  id    name        dob
1 10     sai 1990-10-02
2 11     ram 1981-03-24
3 12 deepika 1987-06-14
4 13 sahithi 1985-08-16

4. Conclusion

In this article, you have learned how to create an empty DataFrame with column names and create a non-empty with column names.

References

Naveen Nelamali

Naveen Nelamali (NNK) is a Data Engineer with 20+ years of experience in transforming data into actionable insights. Over the years, He has honed his expertise in designing, implementing, and maintaining data pipelines with frameworks like Apache Spark, PySpark, Pandas, R, Hive and Machine Learning. Naveen journey in the field of data engineering has been a continuous learning, innovation, and a strong commitment to data integrity. In this blog, he shares his experiences with the data as he come across. Follow Naveen @ LinkedIn and Medium