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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-25T13:29:19+00:00

I am creating a simple data frame like this: qcCtrl <- data.frame(2D6=DNS00012345, 3A4=DNS000013579) My

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I am creating a simple data frame like this:

qcCtrl <- data.frame("2D6"="DNS00012345", "3A4"="DNS000013579")

My understanding is that the column names should be “2D6” and “3A4”, but they are actually “X2D6” and “X3A4”. Why are the X’s being added and how do I make that stop?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I do not recommend working with column names starting with numbers, but if you insist, use the check.names=FALSE argument of data.frame:

    qcCtrl <- data.frame("2D6"="DNS00012345", "3A4"="DNS000013579", 
            check.names=FALSE)
qcCtrl

          2D6          3A4
1 DNS00012345 DNS000013579

    One of the reasons I caution against this, is that the $ operator becomes more tricky to work with. For example, the following fails with an error:

    > qcCtrl$2D6
Error: unexpected numeric constant in "qcCtrl$2"

    To get round this, you have to enclose your column name in back-ticks whenever you work with it:

    > qcCtrl$`2D6`
[1] DNS00012345
Levels: DNS00012345
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