Drop data frame columns by name

Question

I have a number of columns that I would like to remove from a data frame. I know that we can delete them individually using something like:

df$x <- NULL
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Answer 1

There's also the subset command, useful if you know which columns you want:

df <- data.frame(a = 1:10, b = 2:11, c = 3:12)
df <- subset(df, select = c(a, c))

UPDATED after comment by @hadley: To drop columns a,c you could do:

df <- subset(df, select = -c(a, c))