Select multiple ranges of columns using column names in data.table

Question

Let say I have a data table,

dt = data.table(matrix(1:50, nrow = 5));
colnames(dt) = letters[1:10];

> dt
   a  b  c  d  e  f  g  h  i  j
1: 1  6 11 16 21 26          


        

Answer 1

Here is a workaround with cbind and two or more selections.

cbind(dt[, .(a)], dt[, c:d])
#    a  c  d
# 1: 1 11 16
# 2: 2 12 17
# 3: 3 13 18
# 4: 4 14 19
# 5: 5 15 20